THROUGH WONDERLAND. 
57 
“Victoria is picturesque in every detail,” continues the narrator. “The 
land faces a land-locked bay, and behind the place stretch dense forests, 
through which roadways extend to the various suburbs. During our stay the 
frosts of early fall began to color the leaves, and at night the air grew sharp 
and chill. But still the air was clear, and down in the harbor white-winged 
yachts still moved over the bluish waters.” 
Vancouver Island, which forms the outlying barrier to, or seaward side of, 
the inland passage from Juan de Fuca Strait to Queen Charlotte Sound, is one 
of the largest islands in that vast archipelago which forms the passage, and is 
the largest under British dominion. It was called Quadra Island by the Span¬ 
iards, who held it by descent from Mexico (then a Spanish colony) until the 
latter part of the eighteenth century, when Vancouver, of the Royal navy, was 
sent from England to receive its surrender from the Spanish ; it having been 
ordered by the home government at Madrid,—which he did from the Castilian 
governor, Quadra. Vancouver called it Quadra and Vancouver’s Island ; but 
the Spanish title has slowly disappeared under British rule. Vancouver pushed 
his discoveries from here to Cook’s Inlet during his two or three years’ cruise 
on this coast, and many of the names in the inland passage and adjacent lands 
and waters are due to his explorations made nearly a hundred years ago. 
Leaving Victoria and its picturesque surroundings behind us, we swing in a 
huge circle around the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island, until we are 
pointed northward once more. 
Strictly speaking, “the inland passage to Alaska, as defined by nautical 
men, now begins, Puget Sound only belonging to it in a geographical sense, 
but as similar thereto as ‘peas in a pod.’” We shortly after pass 
through a congerie of pretty islands, like the Thousand Islands of the St Law¬ 
rence ofi a greatly magnified scale, when we come to the Gulf of Georgia, one 
of the widest portions of the inland passage. The islands we have left to the 
right (although it may change by the pilot not taking the usual route, so many 
are they to choose from) are the San Juan Islands, of far more importance than 
one would believe, looking at the unpopulated shores ; at least, they were so in 
1856, when the United States and Great Britain came very near coming to 
national blows about their possession. The matter was finally left to arbitra¬ 
tion in the hands of the Emperor of Brazil, and then transferred to the present 
Emperor of Germany, who awarded them to the United States. The British 
troops then withdrew, a post of them having been on one end of the large island, 
with an American post on the other. 
As we steam through the Gulf of Georgia we leave the highest point (Point 
Roberts) of the United States off to our right, in the distance, on the forty- 
ninth parallel. 
Some forty or fifty miles farther on, and we enter the first typical waters 
of the inland passage,—Discovery Passage,—a narrow waterway between high, 
mountainous banks ; a great salt-water, river-like channel, about a mile in 
breadth, and twenty-three and a half miles long by the British Admiralty 
