From the Mexican border to Canada the 1，3oo miles of Pacific coastline
offer only seven natural harbors-Long Beach， San Diego， Monterey，
San Francisco， and Eureka， California， and Willapa Bay and Grays
Harbor， Washington. But the meagerness of shelter does not gravely
affect shipping， for the Pacific Ocean in those latitudes lives up to its
name. From the Canadian border north， however， coastal piloting is a
different matter.
Under prevailing westerly winds， stormy North Pacific waters off the
coast of Japan push up great rollers that march in stately procession，
building in size and power， across 4，000 miles of open sea to crash on the
northwesterly coast of North America.
Precisely on that wild coast， 4~ million years ago nature came to the
rescue of mariners-to-be. A land mass called Cascadia then stood west of
where the present mainland stands. In a gigantic convulsion it sank
beneath the sea， leaving exposed only its mountaintops as Vancouver
Island， the Queen Charlotte Islands and the other barrier islands that
stand between rollers from Japan and the mainland. The sheltered
channel inside the barrier islands threads x，ooo miles northward from the
Washington shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca through British
Columbia and Alaska to Skagway.
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