ing to the westward. Almost as much as gold-pro-
ducino; mountams the world wanted mter-oceanic
communication. From Patagonia, northward, nearly
to the land's end, the seaboard had been searched in
vain for a passage ; only the part between Hudson
bay and the Pacific remaining yet unexplored. In
1719 two vessels, the Albany Frigate, Captain George
Barlow, and the Discovery, Captain David Vaughn,
were fitted out for the purpose of examining the
the western side of Hudson bay, and passing
thence througrh the strait of Anian into the Pacific.
This strait, the discover}'^ of which was so eagerly de-
sired, was believed to exist ; it was even laid down in
charts, and there were some who said that they had
seen it, others that they had entered it, though
all the while it existed only in imagination. James
Knight was given command of the expedition, and
was "with the first opportunity of wind and
weather, to depart from Gravesend on his intended
voyage, and by God's permission, to find out the
strait of Anian, in order to discover gold and
other valuable commodities to the northward." Mr
Knight entered upon the task with enthusiam, though
then eighty years of age, and " procured, and took
with him some large iron-bound chests to hold gold-
dust and other valuables, which he fondly flattered
himself were to be found in those parts." Not hear-
ing from the expedition, many conjectured, as Samuel
Hearne remarks, "that Messrs Knight and Barlow
had found that passage, and had gone through it into
the South Sea by the way of California," and it was
not known until fifty years later, when Hearne was
undertaking his Coppermine river expedition, that
they had not found the Anian strait, and had not
filled their iron-bound chests with the gold of Califor-
nia, but had all been lost in Hudson bay.
The Shining Mountains — as the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range were called by those who wrote geography a hundred years ago — were deemed from
