Vancouver Island, which forms the outlying barrier to, or seaward side of, the inland passage from Juan de Fuca Strait to Queen Charlotte Sound, is one of the largest islands in that vast archipelago which forms the passage, and is the largest under British dominion. It was called Quadra Island by the Spaniards, who held it by descent from Mexico (then a Spanish colony) until the latter part of the eighteenth century, when Vancouver, of the Royal navy, was sent from England to receive its surrender from the Spanish; it having been ordered by the home government at Madrid,--which he did from the Castilian governor, Quadra. Vancouver called it Quadra and Vancouver's Island; but the Spanish title has slowly disappeared under British rule. Vancouver pushed his discoveries from here to Cook's Inlet during his two or three years' cruise on this coast, and many of the names in the inland passage and adjacent lands and waters are due to his explorations made nearly a hundred years ago. Leaving Victoria and its picturesque surroundings behind us, we swing in a huge circle around the southeastern coast of Vancouver Island, until we are pointed northward once more. Strictly speaking, "the inland passage to Alaska, as defined by nautical men, now begins, Puget Sound only belonging to it in a geographical sense, but as similar thereto as 'peas in a pod.'" We shortly after pass through a congerie of pretty islands, like the Thousand Islands of the St Lawrence on a greatly magnified scale, when we come to the Gulf of Georgia, one of the widest portions of the inland passage. The islands we have left to the right (although it may change by the pilot not taking the usual route, so many are they to choose from) are the San Juan Islands, of far more importance than one would believe, looking at the unpopulated shores; at least, they were so in 1856, when the United States and Great Britain came very near coming to national blows about their possession. The matter was finally left to arbitration in the hands of the Emperor of Brazil, and then transferred to the present Emperor of Germany, who awarded them to the United States. The British troops then withdrew, a post of them having been on one end of the large island, with an American post on the other. As we steam through the Gulf of Georgia we leave the highest point (Point Roberts) of the United States off to our right, in the distance, on the forty-ninth parallel.