Pioneers of the Pacific Coast A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters

It was the quest for a passage to the Atlantic that brought Captain James Cook to the Pacific. Before joining the Royal Navy, Cook had been engaged as a captain in the Baltic tr...

When Astoria passed to the Nor'westers, with it came, as we shall see, an opportunity of acquiring for Great Britain the whole of the vast region west of the Rockies, including...

Since Drake's day more than a century had rolled on. Russia was awakening from ages of sleep, as Japan has awakened in our time, and Peter the Great was endeavouring to pilot th...

The movement of the fur traders towards the Pacific now became a fevered race for the wealth of a new El Dorado. Astor's traders in New York, the Scottish and English merchants...

While Fraser was working down the wild canyons of the great river which now bears his name, other fur traders were looking towards the Pacific ocean. In 1810 John Jacob Astor, a...

Chirikoff's crew on the _St Paul_ had long since returned in safety to Kamchatka, and the garrison of the fort on Avacha Bay had given up Bering's men as lost for ever, when one...

American traders were not slow to follow up the discovery of Robert Gray on the Pacific. Spain, the pioneer pathfinder, had ceded Louisiana to France; and France, by way of chec...

All through the sixteenth century the South Seas were regarded as a mysterious wonderworld, whence Spain drew unlimited wealth of gold and silver bullion, of pearls and precious...