The Strait or Gulf of Georgia, that separates Vancouver’s Island from the mainland, although widening at times to forty miles, is for the most part like a broad river or lake, landlocked, walled by high mountain ranges on both sides, and choked at either end with groups of islands. The mighty current of the Frazer River rolls a pale green flood of fresh water into it at the southern entrance, and the river water, with its different density and temperature floating on the salt water, and cutting through it in a body, shows everywhere a sharply defined line of separation. In the broad channels schools of whales are often seen spouting and leaping, and on a lazy, sunny afternoon, while even the mountains seemed dozing in the waveless calm, the idlers on the after deck were roused by the cry of “Whales!” For an hour we watched the frolicking of the snorting monsters, as they spouted jets of water, arched their black backs and fins above the surface, and then disappeared with perpendicular whisks of their huge tails.
Toward the north end of Vancouver’s Island, where Valdes Island is wedged in between it and the mainland shore, the ship enters Discovery Pass, in which are the dangerous tide rips of Seymour Narrows. The tides rushing in and out of the Strait of Georgia dash through this rocky gorge at the rate of four and eight knots an hour on the turn, and the navigators time their sailing hours so as to reach this perilous place in daylight and at the flood tide. Even at that time the water boils in smooth eddies and deep whirlpools, and a ship is whirled half round on its course as it threads the narrow pass between the reefs. At other times the water dashes over the rapids and raises great waves that beat back an opposing bow, and the dullest landsman on the largest ship appreciates the real dangers of the run through this wild ravine, where the wind races with the water and howls in the rigging after the most approved fashion for thrilling marine adventures. Nautical gossips tell one of vessels that, steaming against the furious tide, have had their paddle wheels reversed by its superior strength, and have been swept back to wait the favorable minutes of slack water. Others, caught by the opposing current, are said to have been slowly forced back, or, steaming at full speed, have not gained an inch of headway for two hours. The rise and fall of the tides is thirteen feet in these narrows, and although there are from twenty to sixty fathoms of water in the true channel, there is an ugly ledge and isolated rocks in the middle of the pass on which there are only two and a quarter fathoms. Long before Vancouver carried his victorious ensign through these unknown waters, the Indians had known and dreaded these rapids as the abode of an evil spirit, and for half a century the adventurous Hudson Bay traders went warily through the raging whirlpools.