[6] NOOTKA SOUND, Vancouver Island. Taken possession of by Spain, 1789. The English navigators Cook, Meares and Vancouver, being unable to find another good harbor between Cape Mendocino and Cape Flattery, hit upon Nootka as possessing the requirements of a port for their nation. Upon this a quarrel arose with Spain, which claimed Nootka in virtue of prior discovery. In the end Spain was obliged to relinquish Nootka to England. VANCOUVER, who gave his name to the large island to which Nootka Sound belongs, reached the coast April, 1792, near Cape Mendocino, but strangely missed the Columbia River, though he carefully looked for any opening in the coast line, which he declared to be unbroken from Mendocino to Cape Flattery. Vancouver's surveys were to fill the gap left open by Cook when he was blown off the coast. His passage through the Straits of Fuca had been anticipated by Captain Kendrick, of the American sloop "Washington," in 1790, thus first verifying the long-disputed fact of the existence of those straits. QUEEN ELIZABETH. Though Elizabeth was so well calculated to govern with ability, and even with that glory and advantage to her people which England had never witnessed under any of its preceding sovereigns;—though her administration was so vigorously and equitably exercised, and all her plans and negotiations so ably and successfully conducted;—though, in short, she was equally revered and obeyed, as a sovereign, at home, and she was feared and respected abroad;—yet was Elizabeth a very weak and silly woman in trifling concerns. She seemed a Goliath in the conduct of the mighty affairs of empires; but dwindled into a very woman, when the color, fancy, or fashion of a dress became the topic. Nor was she free from the little petty vexations, jealousies, and rivalship of beauty, so natural to her sex. Indeed, it appears that she hated and envied her cousin, the beautiful Mary of Scots, less on account of her pretensions to the crown, than for her superior charms. When Mary sent Sir James Melville to London, to endeavor to establish a good understanding with Elizabeth, he was instructed by Mary to sound her cousin on subjects that would interest her rather as a woman than a queen. "He accordingly succeeded so well," says Hume, "that he threw that artful princess entirely off her guard, and made her discover the bottom of her heart, full of those vanities, and follies, and ideas of rivalship, which possess the youngest and most frivolous of her sex. He talked to her of his travels, and forgot not to mention the different dresses of the ladies in different countries; and she took care thenceforth to meet the ambassador every day apparelled in a different habit; sometimes she was dressed in the English garb, sometimes in the French, sometimes in the Italian; and she asked him which became her most? He answered, the