In those earlier years Spain was a great sea-going nation and the West Coast map of the United States is dotted all over with Spanish nomenclature. This is found also to some degree on the long coastline of what is now British Columbia, though in this latter region the British element was always more pronounced owing to the British blood of the early explorers, both by sea and land, and to the passionate patriotism of British-born men who were in the employ of the great fur-trading organizations. In this connection it is interesting to recall the origin of the name British Columbia. The territory now covered by the province consisted originally of Vancouver Island and other islands and the mountain mainland, at one time known as New Caledonia. It was good Queen Victoria who gave the name of British Columbia to the great mainland area, and this name was later extended to include Vancouver Island when both were united in one colony in 1866. The Queen wrote in 1858 to Sir E. Bulwer Lytton, statesman and novelist too, that the only name she found on the map of the mainland common to the whole area was Columbia, but as there was a Columbia in South America and as the United States people called their country Columbia, at least in poetry, the Queen thought that British Columbia would be the most suitable name. And British Columbia it remains to this day, proud to have been named by our noble Queen and to have sprung from so illustrious an ancestry. Later on, British Columbia, as we shall see, proved magnetic enough to draw the steel of the great railway across the continent to the Western Ocean.