For a distance of fourteen miles Discovery Passage is much the same width, until reaching Menzies Bay, where the rapids commence. At the base of these rapids, the channel, barely a quarter of a mile wide, suddenly opens out into a large pond-like space. The tide rushes down the narrow passage at the rate of ten knots an hour, and to get up through it was as much as our little steamer could accomplish. Panting and struggling, and sometimes hardly moving, at others she was carried violently against the shore, until by slow degrees she breasted the current and got safely through. I could not help wondering how Captain Vancouver ever managed to get his ship up this terrible place, so difficult even when aided by the power of steam. Above the rapids the passage again widens to Point Chatham, the north-west termination of Discovery Passage. We puff by Thurlow Island, divided from Valdes Island by the Nodales Canal, and anchor in a snug harbour named Blenkinsop’s Anchorage. We start again at sun-up, the fifth morning since leaving Victoria. As we steamed steadily along through Johnston’s Straits, I could recall to my remembrance no scenery that was comparable, in wild grandeur and picturesque grouping, to the scenery on my left. The coast-line of Vancouver Island presented a series of small projecting headlands; the bays and creeks between, seldom rippled by the breeze, are very Edens for wildfowl. In the background, the hills rise sharp and conical, at this time crowned with snow, but all alike densely timbered. In the distance, Hardwicke Island, like a floating emerald, hid the water beyond it. To the right, islands of all sizes and shapes, so thick that one might suppose it had rained islands at some time or other: on the least of them grew pine-trees, any of which would have made a mainmast for the largest ship ever built. I have again and again threaded the intricate passages through the ‘Lake of a Thousand Islands,’ in the Great St. Lawrence; but I say, without fear of contradiction, that the scenery from Chatham Point to the mouth of the Nimkish river is wilder, bolder, and in every respect more beautiful, lovely as I admit the Canadian scenery to be. The ship-channel hugs the shore of Vancouver Island, passing close to Cormorant, Haddington, and Malcolm Islands, and the mouth of the Nimkish river, navigable for canoes some considerable distance. This stream is used by the Hudson’s Bay traders to reach the western side of Vancouver Island. Ascending it in canoes as far as practicable, about two days’ walking brings them to Nootka Sound.