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 formed the ceremony of taking possession. Soon afterward Heceta decided to turn back, but one of his two ships, the Sonora, under the command of Bodega e Cuadra, held her course northward until she attained the latitude 58°. Cuadra landed at a point on the Alaska coast opposite Mt. Edgecumbe, which he named San Jacinto, and there performed the ceremony of taking possession.

On his southern voyage Heceta saw the bay at the mouth of the Columbia, but while recognizing the signs of a great river, he failed to enter it.

Origin of Cook's third voyage. We have now reached an important turning point in the history of the Northwest Coast. The British, through the earlier explorations already mentioned, had developed an extraordinary interest in the Pacific. Cook had explored Australia and New Zealand, great land masses occupied by numerous aboriginal tribes; numerous smaller islands had been found especially in the South Pacific, so the dream of Arthur Dobbs was beginning to take on some of the features of reality.

Great Britain had not found a northern passage into the Pacific. But it was now known, since Samuel Hearne's journey to the mouth of Coppermine River in 1769-1772, that there was open sea far above the latitude of Hudson's Strait and far to the northwest of Hudson's Bay. The suggestion was that by sailing much farther north than formerly a channel might be found. And since Bering's Strait probably connected the Pacific with the northern sea in the west,