Bark (botany)
Bark is the outermost layers of stems and roots of woody plants. Plants with bark include trees, woody vines, shrubs. Bark is a nontechnical term, it consists of the inner bark and the outer bark. The inner bark, which in older stems is living tissue, includes the innermost area of the periderm; the outer bark in older stems includes the dead tissue on the surface of the stems, along with parts of the innermost periderm and all the tissues on the outer side of the periderm. The outer bark on trees which lies external to the last formed periderm is called the rhytidome. Products derived from bark include: bark shingle siding and wall coverings and other flavorings, tanbark for tannin, latex, poisons, various hallucinogenic chemicals and cork. Bark has been used to make cloth and ropes and used as a surface for paintings and map making. A number of plants are grown for their attractive or interesting bark colorations and surface textures or their bark is used as landscape mulch. What is called bark includes a number of different tissues.
Cork is an external, secondary tissue, impermeable to water and gases, is called the phellem. The cork is produced by the cork cambium, a layer of meristematically active cells which serve as a lateral meristem for the periderm; the cork cambium, called the phellogen, is only one cell layer thick and it divides periclinally to the outside producing cork. The phelloderm, not always present in all barks, is a layer of cells formed by and interior to the cork cambium. Together, the phellem and phelloderm constitute the periderm. Cork cell walls contain suberin, a waxy substance which protects the stem against water loss, the invasion of insects into the stem, prevents infections by bacteria and fungal spores; the cambium tissues, i.e. the cork cambium and the vascular cambium, are the only parts of a woody stem where cell division occurs. Phloem is a nutrient-conducting tissue composed of sieve tubes or sieve cells mixed with parenchyma and fibers; the cortex is the primary tissue of roots. In stems the cortex is between the epidermis layer and the phloem, in roots the inner layer is not phloem but the pericycle.
From the outside to the inside of a mature woody stem, the layers include: Bark Periderm Cork, includes the rhytidome Cork cambium Phelloderm Cortex Phloem Vascular cambium Wood Sapwood Heartwood Pith In young stems, which lack what is called bark, the tissues are, from the outside to the inside: Epidermis, which may be replaced by periderm Cortex Primary and secondary phloem Vascular cambium Secondary and primary xylem. As the stem ages and grows, changes occur that transform the surface of the stem into the bark; the epidermis is a layer of cells that cover the plant body, including the stems, leaves and fruits, that protects the plant from the outside world. In old stems the epidermal layer and primary phloem become separated from the inner tissues by thicker formations of cork. Due to the thickening cork layer these cells die; this dead layer is the rough corky bark that forms around other stems. A secondary covering called the periderm forms on small woody stems and many non-woody plants, composed of cork, the cork cambium, the phelloderm.
The periderm forms from the phellogen. The periderm replaces the epidermis, acts as a protective covering like the epidermis. Mature phellem cells have suberin in their walls to protect the stem from desiccation and pathogen attack. Older phellem cells are dead; the skin on the potato tuber constitutes the cork of the periderm. In woody plants the epidermis of newly grown stems is replaced by the periderm in the year; as the stems grow a layer of cells form under the epidermis, called the cork cambium, these cells produce cork cells that turn into cork. A limited number of cell layers may form interior to the cork cambium, called the phelloderm; as the stem grows, the cork cambium produces new layers of cork which are impermeable to gases and water and the cells outside the periderm, namely the epidermis and older secondary phloem die. Within the periderm are lenticels, which form during the production of the first periderm layer. Since there are living cells within the cambium layers that need to exchange gases during metabolism, these lenticels, because they have numerous intercellular spaces, allow gaseous exchange with the outside atmosphere.
As the bark develops, new lenticels are formed within the cracks of the cork layers. The rhytidome is the most familiar part of bark, being the outer layer that covers the trunks of trees, it is composed of dead cells and is produced by the formation of multiple layers of suberized periderm and phloem tissue. The rhytidome is well developed in older stems and roots of trees. In shrubs, older bark is exfoliated and thick rhytidome accumulates, it is thickest and most distinctive at the trunk or bole of the tree. Bark tissues make up by weight between 10–20% of woody vascular plants and consists of various biopolymers, lignin, suberin and polysaccharides. Up to 40% of the bark tissue is made of lignin which forms an important part of a plant providing stru
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south and is bounded by Asia and Australia in the west and the Americas in the east. At 165,250,000 square kilometers in area, this largest division of the World Ocean—and, in turn, the hydrosphere—covers about 46% of Earth's water surface and about one-third of its total surface area, making it larger than all of Earth's land area combined; the centers of both the Water Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere are in the Pacific Ocean. The equator subdivides it into the North Pacific Ocean and South Pacific Ocean, with two exceptions: the Galápagos and Gilbert Islands, while straddling the equator, are deemed wholly within the South Pacific, its mean depth is 4,000 meters. The Mariana Trench in the western North Pacific is the deepest point in the world, reaching a depth of 10,911 meters; the western Pacific has many peripheral seas. Though the peoples of Asia and Oceania have traveled the Pacific Ocean since prehistoric times, the eastern Pacific was first sighted by Europeans in the early 16th century when Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama in 1513 and discovered the great "southern sea" which he named Mar del Sur.
The ocean's current name was coined by Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan during the Spanish circumnavigation of the world in 1521, as he encountered favorable winds on reaching the ocean. He called it Mar Pacífico, which in both Portuguese and Spanish means "peaceful sea". Important human migrations occurred in the Pacific in prehistoric times. About 3000 BC, the Austronesian peoples on the island of Taiwan mastered the art of long-distance canoe travel and spread themselves and their languages south to the Philippines and maritime Southeast Asia. Long-distance trade developed all along the coast from Mozambique to Japan. Trade, therefore knowledge, extended to the Indonesian islands but not Australia. By at least 878 when there was a significant Islamic settlement in Canton much of this trade was controlled by Arabs or Muslims. In 219 BC Xu Fu sailed out into the Pacific searching for the elixir of immortality. From 1404 to 1433 Zheng He led expeditions into the Indian Ocean; the first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.
The east side of the ocean was discovered by Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. In 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Spanish expedition to the Spice Islands that would result in the first world circumnavigation. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Cape Horn, the expedition found calm waters; the ocean was called the Sea of Magellan in his honor until the eighteenth century. Although Magellan himself died in the Philippines in 1521, Spanish Basque navigator Juan Sebastián Elcano led the remains of the expedition back to Spain across the Indian Ocean and round the Cape of Good Hope, completing the first world circumnavigation in a single expedition in 1522. Sailing around and east of the Moluccas, between 1525 and 1527, Portuguese expeditions discovered the Caroline Islands, the Aru Islands, Papua New Guinea.
In 1542–43 the Portuguese reached Japan. In 1564, five Spanish ships carrying 379 explorers crossed the ocean from Mexico led by Miguel López de Legazpi, sailed to the Philippines and Mariana Islands. For the remainder of the 16th century, Spanish influence was paramount, with ships sailing from Mexico and Peru across the Pacific Ocean to the Philippines via Guam, establishing the Spanish East Indies; the Manila galleons operated for two and a half centuries, linking Manila and Acapulco, in one of the longest trade routes in history. Spanish expeditions discovered Tuvalu, the Marquesas, the Cook Islands, the Solomon Islands, the Admiralty Islands in the South Pacific. In the quest for Terra Australis, Spanish explorations in the 17th century, such as the expedition led by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, discovered the Pitcairn and Vanuatu archipelagos, sailed the Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea, named after navigator Luís Vaz de Torres. Dutch explorers, sailing around southern Africa engaged in discovery and trade.
In the 16th and 17th centuries Spain considered the Pacific Ocean a mare clausum—a sea closed to other naval powers. As the only known entrance from the Atlantic, the Strait of Magellan was at times patrolled by fleets sent to prevent entrance of non-Spanish ships. On the western side of the Pacific Ocean the Dutch threatened the Spanish Philippines; the 18th cen
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park
Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park is a state park, located in Humboldt County, near the town of Orick and 50 miles north of Eureka. The 14,000 acre park is a coastal sanctuary for old-growth Coast Redwood trees; the park is jointly managed by the California Department of Parks and Recreation and the National Park Service as a part of the Redwood National and State Parks. These parks have been collectively designated as a World Heritage Site and form part of the California Coast Ranges International Biosphere Reserve; the meadow along the Newton B. Drury Scenic Parkway, with its population of Roosevelt elk, is considered a centerpiece of the park, located near the information center and campground; these open areas of grassland within the redwood forest are locally known as prairies. Other popular sites in the park are Gold Bluffs Beach; the park is home to the tailed frog and several species of salmon. Some of the first Euro-Americans to visit the vicinity arrived in 1851 with the discovery of gold in the area that would become known as Gold Bluffs.
Gold Bluffs had at one time been a substantial mining camp, although little remains of the camp today. With the end of the Civil War and a fall in the price of gold, operations at the Gold Bluffs were shut down. In 1872 a Captain Taylor of New York visited the Gold Bluffs to obtain the mine and exploit the rich sands deposited offshore. In the spring of 1873, over 100 tons of sand were raised from an area from one-half mile to within 40 feet of the bluffs, in depths of from eight to four fathoms of water. However, by the 1880s activities at the Gold Bluffs again began to slump. One story of the region comes from the area of Gold Bluffs. In a newspaper article from 1984, Thelma Hufford recorded this tale: At Upper Bluffs, imported miners from Cornwall, who were expert tunnel builders and who know how to set up timbers in a tunnel... Arthur Davison said was opened in 1898; the tunnel was through to the coast. It was 600 feet long and six feet square; the tunnel was built to bring water from Prairie Creek to the headwaters of Butler Creek.
A reservoir was built on the west side of the creek. It was used for five years.... The opening, Fay Aldrich said, was on the Prairie Creek side of Joe Stockel's place near the apple tree on Highway 101. By 1920 mining operations at the Gold Bluffs had been closed down; the park was created in 1923 with an initial donation of 160 acres by owner Zipporah Russ to the Save the Redwoods League. By 1931, the League had acquired an additional 5000 acres from the Sage Land and Improvement Company, a large timber concern. During the great depression, a Civilian Conservation Corps camp was stationed in the park, clearing out campsites and creating fences on the borders of the prairie. Notable redwoods include Big Tree, Corkscrew Redwood, the Cathedral Trees. Many redwoods in the park have reached 300 feet tall. Besides Coast redwoods, other tall coniferous tree species in the park's forests include coast Douglas fir, Sitka spruce and western hemlock. Trails in the park include: Miners Ridge and James Irvine - 11.6 miles Brown Creek Loop - 3.5 miles Big Tree Loop - 3.2 miles Ten Taypo Trail - 3.5 miles Rhododendron and Cal Barrel - 5.1 miles West Ridge and Prairie Creek South - 5.8 miles West Ridge and Rhododendron North - 7.7 miles The Friendship Ridge Trail - 8.0 miles The Ah Pah Trail - 0.6-mile The Nature Trail - 1.0-mile Hiker Jim Hamm was attacked by a mountain lion in 2007 while hiking the Brown Creek Loop.
A visitor center is provided with wall maps and bookstore. It is along the same drive as some day-use parking is available. There is parking along parts of the parkway, where elk may be seen. Restrooms are located near the visitor center and nearby at the Big Tree parking lot. California State Parks: official Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park website Images and Information including Prairie Creek's Atlas Grove North Coast Redwood Interpretive Association
Abies amabilis
Abies amabilis known as the Pacific silver fir, is a fir native to the Pacific Northwest of North America, occurring in the Pacific Coast Ranges and the Cascade Range from the extreme southeast of Alaska, through western British Columbia and Oregon, to the extreme northwest of California. It is commonly referred to as the white fir, red fir, lovely fir, Amabilis fir, Cascades fir, or silver fir, it grows at altitudes of sea level to 1,500 metres in the north of the range, 1,000–2,300 m in the south of the range, always in temperate rain forest with high precipitation and cool, humid summers. Common associate trees are Douglas fir and in the extreme southern area of its range, California buckeye, it is a large evergreen coniferous tree growing to 30–45 m, exceptionally 72 m tall, with a trunk diameter of up to 1.2 m, exceptionally 2.3 m. The bark on younger trees is light grey and covered with resin blisters. On older trees, it furrows; the leaves are needle-like, flattened, 2–4.5 cm long and 2 mm wide by 0.5 mm thick, matte dark green above, with two white bands of stomata below, notched at the tip.
The leaf arrangement is spiral on the shoot, but with each leaf variably twisted at the base so they lie flat to either side of and above the shoot, with none below the shoot. The shoots are orange-red with dense velvety pubescence; the cones are 9–17 cm long and 4–6 cm broad, dark purple before maturity. The winged seeds are released when the cones disintegrate at maturity about 6–7 months after pollination. Pacific silver fir is closely related to Maries' fir A. mariesii from Japan, distinguished by its shorter leaves—1.5–2.5 cm —and smaller cones, which are 5–11 cm long. The wood is soft and not strong; the foliage has an attractive scent and is sometimes used for Christmas decoration, including Christmas trees. It is planted as an ornamental tree in large parks, though its requirement for cool, humid summers limits the areas where it grows well. Gymnosperm Database: Abies amabilis C. Michael Hogan Aesculus californica, Globaltwitcher.com, ed. N. Stromberg Flora of North America Vol. 2: Pinaceae Interactive Distribution Map of Abies amabilis
Wildfire
A wildfire or wildland fire is a fire in an area of combustible vegetation occurring in rural areas. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire can be classified more as a brush fire, desert fire, forest fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire. Fossil charcoal indicates that wildfires began soon after the appearance of terrestrial plants 420 million years ago. Wildfire's occurrence throughout the history of terrestrial life invites conjecture that fire must have had pronounced evolutionary effects on most ecosystems' flora and fauna. Earth is an intrinsically flammable planet owing to its cover of carbon-rich vegetation, seasonally dry climates, atmospheric oxygen, widespread lightning and volcanic ignitions. Wildfires can be characterized in terms of the cause of ignition, their physical properties, the combustible material present, the effect of weather on the fire. Wildfires can cause damage to property and human life, although occurring wildfires may have beneficial effects on native vegetation and ecosystems that have evolved with fire.
High-severity wildfire creates complex early seral forest habitat, which has higher species richness and diversity than unburned old forest. Many plant species depend on the effects of fire for reproduction. Wildfires in ecosystems where wildfire is uncommon or where non-native vegetation has encroached may have negative ecological effects. Wildfire behavior and severity result from a combination of factors such as available fuels, physical setting, weather. Analyses of historical meteorological data and national fire records in western North America show the primacy of climate in driving large regional fires via wet periods that create substantial fuels, or drought and warming that extend conducive fire weather. Strategies for wildfire prevention and suppression have varied over the years. One common and inexpensive technique is controlled burning: intentionally igniting smaller fires to minimize the amount of flammable material available for a potential wildfire. Vegetation may be burned periodically to maintain high species diversity and limit the accumulation of plants and other debris that may serve as fuel.
Wildland fire use is the cheapest and most ecologically appropriate policy for many forests. Fuels may be removed by logging, but fuels treatments and thinning have no effect on severe fire behavior when under extreme weather conditions. Wildfire itself is "the most effective treatment for reducing a fire's rate of spread, fireline intensity, flame length, heat per unit of area", according to Jan Van Wagtendonk, a biologist at the Yellowstone Field Station. Building codes in fire-prone areas require that structures be built of flame-resistant materials and a defensible space be maintained by clearing flammable materials within a prescribed distance from the structure. Three major natural causes of wildfire ignitions exist: dry climate lightning volcanic eruptionThe most common direct human causes of wildfire ignition include arson, discarded cigarettes, power-lines arcs, sparks from equipment. Ignition of wildland fires via contact with hot rifle-bullet fragments is possible under the right conditions.
Wildfires can be started in communities experiencing shifting cultivation, where land is cleared and farmed until the soil loses fertility, slash and burn clearing. Forested areas cleared by logging encourage the dominance of flammable grasses, abandoned logging roads overgrown by vegetation may act as fire corridors. Annual grassland fires in southern Vietnam stem in part from the destruction of forested areas by US military herbicides and mechanical land-clearing and -burning operations during the Vietnam War; the most common cause of wildfires varies throughout the world. In Canada and northwest China, lightning operates as the major source of ignition. In other parts of the world, human involvement is a major contributor. In Africa, Central America, Mexico, New Zealand, South America, Southeast Asia, wildfires can be attributed to human activities such as agriculture, animal husbandry, land-conversion burning. In China and in the Mediterranean Basin, human carelessness is a major cause of wildfires.
In the United States and Australia, the source of wildfires can be traced both to lightning strikes and to human activities. Coal seam fires burn in the thousands around the world, such as those in Burning Mountain, New South Wales, they can flare up unexpectedly and ignite nearby flammable material. The spread of wildfires varies based on the flammable material present, its vertical arrangement and moisture content, weather conditions. Fuel arrangement and density is governed in part by topography, as land shape determines factors such as available sunlight and water for plant growth. Overall, fire types can be characterized by their fuels as follows: Ground fires are fed by subterranean roots and other buried organic matter; this fuel type is susceptible to ignition due to spotting. Ground fires burn by smoldering, can burn for days to months, such as peat fires in Kalimantan and Eastern Sumatra, which resulted from a riceland creation project that unintentionally drained and dried the peat.
Crawling or surface fires are fueled by low-lying vegetation on the forest floor such as leaf and timber litter, debris and low-lying shrubbery. This kind of fire burns at a lower temperature than crown fires and may spread
Salt
Salt is a mineral composed of sodium chloride, a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts. Salt is present in vast quantities in seawater; the open ocean has about 35 grams of solids per liter of sea water, a salinity of 3.5%. Salt is essential for life in general, saltiness is one of the basic human tastes. Salt is one of the oldest and most ubiquitous food seasonings, salting is an important method of food preservation; some of the earliest evidence of salt processing dates to around 6,000 BC, when people living in the area of present-day Romania boiled spring water to extract salts. Salt was prized by the ancient Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Hittites and the Indians. Salt became an important article of trade and was transported by boat across the Mediterranean Sea, along specially built salt roads, across the Sahara on camel caravans; the scarcity and universal need for salt have led nations to go to war over it and use it to raise tax revenues. Salt has other cultural and traditional significance.
Salt is processed from salt mines, by the evaporation of seawater and mineral-rich spring water in shallow pools. Its major industrial products are caustic chlorine. Of the annual global production of around two hundred million tonnes of salt, about 6% is used for human consumption. Other uses include water conditioning processes, de-icing highways, agricultural use. Edible salt is sold in forms such as sea salt and table salt which contains an anti-caking agent and may be iodised to prevent iodine deficiency; as well as its use in cooking and at the table, salt is present in many processed foods. Sodium is an essential nutrient for human health via its role as an osmotic solute. Excessive salt consumption may increase the risk of cardiovascular diseases, such as hypertension, in children and adults; such health effects of salt have long been studied. Accordingly, numerous world health associations and experts in developed countries recommend reducing consumption of popular salty foods; the World Health Organization recommends that adults should consume less than 2,000 mg of sodium, equivalent to 5 grams of salt per day.
All through history, the availability of salt has been pivotal to civilization. What is now thought to have been the first city in Europe is Solnitsata, in Bulgaria, a salt mine, providing the area now known as the Balkans with salt since 5400 BC; the name Solnitsata means "salt works". While people have used canning and artificial refrigeration to preserve food for the last hundred years or so, salt has been the best-known food preservative for meat, for many thousands of years. A ancient salt-works operation has been discovered at the Poiana Slatinei archaeological site next to a salt spring in Lunca, Neamț County, Romania. Evidence indicates that Neolithic people of the Precucuteni Culture were boiling the salt-laden spring water through the process of briquetage to extract the salt as far back as 6050 BC; the salt extracted from this operation may have had a direct correlation to the rapid growth of this society's population soon after its initial production began. The harvest of salt from the surface of Xiechi Lake near Yuncheng in Shanxi, dates back to at least 6000 BC, making it one of the oldest verifiable saltworks.
There is more salt in animal tissues, such as meat and milk, than in plant tissues. Nomads who subsist on their flocks and herds do not eat salt with their food, but agriculturalists, feeding on cereals and vegetable matter, need to supplement their diet with salt. With the spread of civilization, salt became one of the world's main trading commodities, it was of high value to the ancient Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Hittites and other peoples of antiquity. In the Middle East, salt was used to ceremonially seal an agreement, the ancient Hebrews made a "covenant of salt" with God and sprinkled salt on their offerings to show their trust in him. An ancient practice in time of war was salting the earth: scattering salt around in a defeated city to prevent plant growth; the Bible tells the story of King Abimelech, ordered by God to do this at Shechem, various texts claim that the Roman general Scipio Aemilianus Africanus ploughed over and sowed the city of Carthage with salt after it was defeated in the Third Punic War.
Salt may have been used for barter in connection with the obsidian trade in Anatolia in the Neolithic Era. Salt was included among funeral offerings found in ancient Egyptian tombs from the third millennium BC, as were salted birds, salt fish. From about 2800 BC, the Egyptians began exporting salt fish to the Phoenicians in return for Lebanon cedar and the dye Tyrian purple. Herodotus described salt trading routes across Libya back in the 5th century BC. In the early years of the Roman Empire, roads were built for the transportation of salt from the salt imported at Ostia to the capital. In Africa, salt was used as currency south of the Sahara, slabs of rock salt were used as coins in Abyssinia. Moorish merchants in the 6th century traded salt for weight for weight; the Tuareg have traditionally maintained routes across the Sahara for the transportation of salt by Azalai. The caravans
Victoria, British Columbia
Victoria is the capital city of the Canadian province of British Columbia, located on the southern tip of Vancouver Island off Canada's Pacific coast. The city has a population of 85,792, while the metropolitan area of Greater Victoria has a population of 367,770, making it the 15th most populous Canadian metropolitan area. Victoria is the 7th most densely populated city in Canada with 4,405.8 people per square kilometre, a greater population density than Toronto. Victoria is the southernmost major city in Western Canada, is about 100 kilometres from British Columbia's largest city of Vancouver on the mainland; the city is about 100 km from Seattle by airplane, ferry, or the Victoria Clipper passenger-only ferry which operates daily, year round between Seattle and Victoria, 40 kilometres from Port Angeles, Washington, by ferry Coho across the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Named after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and, at the time, British North America, Victoria is one of the oldest cities in the Pacific Northwest, with British settlement beginning in 1843.
The city has retained a large number of its historic buildings, in particular its two most famous landmarks, Parliament Buildings and the Empress hotel. The city's Chinatown is the second oldest in North America after San Francisco's; the region's Coast Salish First Nations peoples established communities in the area long before non-native settlement several thousand years earlier, which had large populations at the time of European exploration. Known as "The Garden City", Victoria is an attractive city and a popular tourism destination with a thriving technology sector that has risen to be its largest revenue-generating private industry. Victoria is according to Numbeo; the city has a large non-local student population, who come to attend the University of Victoria, Camosun College, Royal Roads University, the Victoria College of Art, the Canadian College of Performing Arts, high school programs run by the region's three school districts. Victoria is popular with boaters with its rugged beaches.
Victoria is popular with retirees, who come to enjoy the temperate and snow-free climate of the area as well as the relaxed pace of the city. Prior to the arrival of European navigators in the late 1700s, the Victoria area was home to several communities of Coast Salish peoples, including the Songhees; the Spanish and British took up the exploration of the northwest coast, beginning with the visits of Juan Pérez in 1774, of James Cook in 1778. Although the Victoria area of the Strait of Juan de Fuca was not penetrated until 1790, Spanish sailors visited Esquimalt Harbour in 1790, 1791, 1792. In 1841 James Douglas was charged with the duty of setting up a trading post on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, upon the recommendation by George Simpson a new more northerly post be built in case Fort Vancouver fell into American hands. Douglas founded Fort Victoria on the site of present-day Victoria in anticipation of the outcome of the Oregon Treaty in 1846, extending the British North America/United States border along the 49th parallel from the Rockies to the Strait of Georgia.
Erected in 1843 as a Hudson's Bay Company trading post on a site called Camosun known as "Fort Albert", the settlement was renamed Fort Victoria in November 1843, in honour of Queen Victoria. The Songhees established a village across the harbour from the fort; the Songhees' village was moved north of Esquimalt. The crown colony was established in 1849. Between the years 1850-1854 a series of treaty agreements known as the Douglas Treaties were made with indigenous communities to purchase certain plots of land in exchange for goods; these agreements contributed to a town being laid out on the site and made the capital of the colony, though controversy has followed about the ethical negotiation and upholding of rights by the colonial government. The superintendent of the fort, Chief Factor James Douglas was made the second governor of the Vancouver Island Colony, would be the leading figure in the early development of the city until his retirement in 1864; when news of the discovery of gold on the British Columbia mainland reached San Francisco in 1858, Victoria became the port, supply base, outfitting centre for miners on their way to the Fraser Canyon gold fields, mushrooming from a population of 300 to over 5000 within a few days.
Victoria was incorporated as a city in 1862. In 1865, the North Pacific home of the Royal Navy was established in Esquimalt and today is Canada's Pacific coast naval base. In 1866 when the island was politically united with the mainland, Victoria was designated the capital of the new united colony instead of New Westminster – an unpopular move on the Mainland – and became the provincial capital when British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation in 1871. In the latter half of the 19th century, the Port of Victoria became one of North America's largest importers of opium, serving the opium trade from Hong Kong and distribution into North America. Opium trade was legal and unregulated until 1865 the legislature issued licences and levied duties on its import and sale; the opium trade was banned in 1908. In 1886, with the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway terminus on Burrard Inlet, Victoria's position as the commercial centre of British Columbia was irrevocably lost to the city of Vancouver, British Columbia.
The city subsequently began culti
