ward, through the passage north of Queen Charlotte's Island, to the Pacific. The sea through which the track extends is represented as unlimited in the east, and communicating, in the west, with the Pacific by channels between islands: no pretension to accuracy is, however, made in this part of the chart, the object being merely to show that the Washington sailed from the southern entrance of the strait eastward to the longitude of 237 degrees, and northward to the latitude of 55 degrees.

The name of the person under whose command the passage was said to have been effected is not given; but, Gray being frequently mentioned by Meares, in his narrative and accompanying papers, as the captain of the Washington, it was naturally supposed that, if that sloop did pass through the strait, she must have done so under the command of Gray; and when Vancouver, who met Gray near Nootka in 1792, as will be hereafter related, was assured by him that he had entered the opening, but had only advanced fifty miles within it, the entire erroneousness of the account given by Meares was regarded as established.

However, about the time of Vancouver's departure from England, an angry discussion was carried on through the medium of pamphlets, between Meares, and Dixon the captain of the ship Queen Charlotte, (one of the vessels sent to the Pacific by the King George's Sound Company of London,) in consequence of the severe remarks made by Meares, in his work, on the character of Dixon, and on many parts of his journal, which had been published in 1789. Dixon, in his first pamphlet,* particularly attacked and ridiculed the account given by his opponent of the passage of the Washington, and sneeringly summoned him to "inform the public from what authority he had introduced the track of that vessel into his chart." To this Meares, in his Answer, † says, "Mr. Neville, a gentleman of the most respectable character, who came home in the Chesterfield, a ship in the service of the East India Company, made that communication to me which I have communicated to the public. Mr. Kendrick, who commanded the Washington, arrived at China, with a very valuable cargo of furs, previous to the departure of the Chesterfield; and Mr. Neville, who was

* Remarks on the Voyages of John Meares, in a Letter to that Gentleman, by George Dixon, late Commander of the Queen Charlotte in a Voyage around the World. London, 1790.

↑ An Answer to Mr. George Dixon, &c., by John Meares; in which the Remarks of Mr. Dixon are fully considered and refuted. London, 1791.

continually with him during that interval, and received the particulars of the track from him, was so obliging as to state it to me."

Thus it appears that the passage of the Washington through the strait, as reported by Meares, took place under Kendrick, after Gray had quitted the command of that sloop. This explanation was published in London subsequent to the departure of Vancouver for the Pacific; and, the discussion between Meares and Dixon being on matters in which the public could have taken little or no interest, it was doubtless forgotten, and their pamphlets were out of circulation, long before the return of the navigator to England.

With regard to the truth or falsehood of the account, no information has been obtained, in addition to that afforded by Meares ; and, although little dependence can be placed on his statements, when unsupported by other evidence, yet they should not be rejected in this case, because-first, he had no interest in ascribing any thing meritorious to citizens of the United States, whom he uniformly mentions with contempt or dislike in his work, and accuses of taking part with the Spaniards against his vessels; -secondly, the subject was one with which he was perfectly conversant, and on which he would not probably have been deceived, or have committed any error of judgment; and, — lastly, the geography of that part of the American coasts corresponds exactly with the descriptions given by Kendrick of what he had seen, though the inferences drawn from them by Meares are incorrect. Thus the easternmost part of the Strait of Fuca is now known to be in the meridian of 237 degrees east from Greenwich, and under the parallel of 48 degrees, from the intersection of which lines the coast of the continent runs north-westward, through ten degrees of latitude, penetrated by numerous inlets, and bordered by thousands of islands; so that a navigator, sailing along this coast, without tracing to their terminations all these channels and inlets, might well have supposed himself in a sea extending far on either side, and filled with islands.

Under these circumstances, Kendrick is to be considered as the first person, belonging to a civilized nation, who sailed through the Strait of Fuca, after its discovery by the Greek pilot, in 1592.

Vancouver did not reach the north-west coasts of America until March, 1792. In the mean time, the Spaniards had resumed their position at Nootka Sound, and formed another establishment in its vicinity; and several voyages of discovery had been made by their navigators along those coasts. The Spanish government was,

indeed, then seriously directing its attention to the discovery and occupation of the territories north of its settlements in California, agreeably to the plan devised in 1765, and with the same object of preventing those territories from falling into the possession of other nations; and, for these purposes, the viceroy of Mexico was directed to employ every means at his disposal. Martinez was, indeed, deprived of his command, immediately on his arrival in San Blas, in December, 1789: but his vessels, including the Princess Royal, which had been taken from the English in the preceding summer, were sent back to Nootka Sound, under Captain Francisco Elisa, in the spring of 1790; and preparations were immediately begun for a permanent establishment on Friendly Cove.

As soon as the first arrangements for this purpose were completed, Elisa despatched Lieutenant Salvador Fidalgo, in the schooner San Carlos, to examine the coasts occupied by the Russians, and inquire into the proceedings of that nation in America. Fidalgo accordingly sailed for Prince William's Sound, in which, and in Cook's River, he spent nearly three months, engaged in surveying and in visiting the Russian establishments; his provisions being then exhausted, he took his departure for San Blas, where he arrived on the 14th of November. The geographical information obtained by him was scanty; and the only news which he brought back, respecting the proceedings of the Russians, was, that they had formed an establishment on Prince William's Sound, and that a ship had passed that bay from Kamtchatka, on an exploring expedition towards the east.*

The Russian ship, thus mentioned by Fidalgo, was one of those which had been begun at Ochotsk in 1785, by order of the empress Catharine, for a "secret astronomical and geographical expedition, to navigate the Frozen Ocean, and describe its coasts, and to ascertain the situation of the islands in the sea between the continents of Asia and America." For this expedition, a number of officers and men of science, from various parts of Europe, were engaged; and the command was intrusted to Joseph Billings, an Englishman, who had accompanied Cook, in his last expedition, as assistant astronomer: but the preparations proceeded so slowly, in consequence of the want of every thing requisite for the purpose at

Manuscript journal of the voyage of Fidalgo, among the documents obtained from the hydrographical department of Madrid.

+ Narrative of the Russian expedition under Billings, by Martin Sauer.

Ochotsk, that the vessels were not ready for sea until 1789, and then one of them was wrecked immediately after leaving the port. With the other vessel Billings took his departure, on the 2d of May, 1790, and sailed eastward, stopping, in his way, at Unalashka, Kodiak, and Prince William's Sound, as far as Mount St. Elias; but there his provisions began to fail, and he returned to Petropawlowsk, soon after reaching which he abandoned the command of the enterprise. In the following year, the same vessel, with another, which had been built in Kamtchatka, quitted the Bay of Avatscha, under Captains Hall and Sarytscheff, neither of whom advanced beyond Bering's Strait on the north, or Aliaska on the east, or collected any information of value within those limits. A melancholy picture of the sufferings experienced in these vessels has been presented in the narrative of Martin Sauer, a German, who, in an unlucky moment, agreed to act as secretary to the expedition another account, contradicting that of Sauer in many particulars, has been published by Sarytscheff, who attributes the failure of the enterprise to the incapacity of Billings.

In the summer of 1790, an attempt was also made, by the Spaniards, to explore the supposed Strait of Juan de Fuca. For that purpose, Elisa, the commandant of Nootka, detached Lieutenant Quimper, in the sloop Princess Royal, who traced the passage in an eastwardly direction, examining both its shores, to the distance of about a hundred miles from its mouth, where it was observed to branch off into a number of smaller passages, towards the south, the east, and the north, some of which were channels between islands, while others appeared to extend far into the interior. Quimper was unable, from want of time, to penetrate any of these passages; and he could do no more than note the positions of their entrances, and of several harbors, all of which are now well known, though they are generally distinguished by names different from those assigned to them by the Spaniards Among these passages and harbors were the Canal de Caamano, afterwards named by Vancouver Admiralty Inlet; the Boca de Flon, or Deception Passage; the Canal de Guemes, and Canal de Haro, which may still be found under those names in English charts, extending northward from the eastern end of the strait; Port Quadra, the Port Discovery of Vancouver, said to be one of the best harbors on the Pacific side of America, with Port Quimper, near it on the west; and Port Nuñez Gaona, called Poverty Cove by the American fur traders, situated a few miles east of Cape

Flattery, where the Spaniards attempted, in 1792, to form a settlement. Having performed this duty as well as was possible under the circumstances in which he was placed, Quimper returned to Nootka, where he arrived in the beginning of August.*

On the 2d of June, 1791, Captain Alexandro Malaspina,† an accomplished Italian navigator in the service of Spain, who was then engaged in an expedition of survey and discovery in the Pacific, arrived on the coast, near Mount San Jacinto, or Edgecumb, with his two ships, the Descubierta, commanded by himself, and the Atrevida, under Captain Bustamente. The principal object of their visit was to determine the question as to the existence of the Strait of Anian, described in the account of Maldonado's pretended voyage, the credibility of which had been, in the preceding year, affirmed, by the French geographer Buache, in a memoir read before the Academy of Sciences of Paris. With this view, they carefully examined the coast between Prince William's Sound and Mount Fairweather, running nearly in the direction of the 60th parallel, under which Maldonado had placed the entrance of his strait into the Pacific, searching the various bays and inlets which there open to the sea, particularly that called by the English Admiralty Bay, situated at the foot of Mount St. Elias. They found, however, doubtless to their satisfaction, no passage leading northward or eastward from the Pacific; and they became convinced that the whole coast thus surveyed was bordered by an unbroken chain of lofty mountains. Want of time prevented them from continuing their examinations farther south; and they could only, in passing, determine the latitudes and longitudes of a few

* The journal of this voyage is among the manuscripts obtained from the hydrographical department of Madrid: annexed to it is a memoir on the manners, customs, and language, of the Indians about Nootka Sound, translated from the English of Joseph Ingraham, the mate of the American ship Columbia, who wrote it, at the request of Martinez, in 1789.

The journals of Malaspina's expedition have never been published. A sketch of his voyage along the north-west coasts of America is given in the Introduction to the Journal of Galiano and Valdes, in which the highest, and, in some places, the most extravagant, praise is bestowed on the officers engaged in it. Yet-will it be believed? — the name of Malaspina does not appear there or in any other part of the book. The unfortunate commander, having given some offence to Godoy, better known as the Prince of the Peace, who then ruled Spain without restriction, was, on his return to Europe in 1794, confined in a dungeon at Corunna, and there kept as a prisoner until 1802, when he was liberated, after the peace of Amiens, at the express desire of Napoleon. The name of one who had thus sinned could not be allowed to appear on the pages of a work published officially, by the Spanish government, for the purpose of vindicating the claims of its navigators.