Nothing daunted by this first failure, we find Meares starting again for the North in January, 1788, this time in command of two vessels, the Felice and Iphigenia, and with a crew devoted to his service. After an interesting voyage across the Pacific, and a short halt in King George's Sound, our hero reached the Straits of Juan de Fuca, discovered, as we have seen, two centuries before by a Greek pilot of that name. Here the vessels were overtaken by a terrible storm, and, the rugged buttresses of Vancouver's Island offering no shelter, their captains were compelled to steer for the south. The rocky shores of the modern Territory of Washington, then dotted with Indian villages, the mouth of the Columbia River, the pine-clad heights of Oregon, were passed in rapid succession—the names of Shoalwater Bay, Deception Bay, Destruction Island, and Cape Disappointment, given by Meares to the most noteworthy features of the scenery, still bearing witness to his despondency when thus driven in the opposite direction to that in which he judged his work to be awaiting him.
The early summer found the explorers off the coast of Northern California, then still known as New Albion, and after an unsuccessful, because probably a not very hearty effort to examine its fertile bays, the vessels were once more turned northward, with Nootka Sound as their goal. The weather being now more propitious, Meares sent a number of his men in one of the long-boats up the Straits of Juan de Fuca, with orders to examine them thoroughly. The sailors, weary of their long detention on shipboard, started on this trip with eager delight; but when day after day passed by, and there were no signs of their return, their master became uneasy in their behalf. At last, after a long period of suspense, the boat was seen issuing from the narrow inlet, and an eager shout of joy from the large vessels hailed the fact that the numbers of the men were undiminished. But why did they row so slowly, and what was the meaning of their air of exhaustion and dejection? As they came nearer, their comrades saw that each one of them was bleeding from terrible wounds, and when they had been helped up the ship-ladders, they told how they had been attacked as they rowed up the straits by two canoes full of armed warriors, and only escaped after a terrible struggle, which would probably have ended in the massacre of them all, had not the death of the native chief struck terror into his subjects' hearts. As the dusky leader fell with a ball lodged in his brain, his warriors took to flight, and the English, bleeding from their wounds, made the best of their way back to their vessels.
