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Updated: June 13, 2025
Gray thought it was the belated Columbia under Kendrick; but a rowboat came out bearing Captain Meares himself, who breakfasted with the Americans on September 17, and had his long-boats tow the Lady Washington inside Nootka, where Gray was surprised to see two English snows under Portuguese colors, with a cannon-mounted garrison on shore, and a schooner of thirty tons, the Northwest-America, all ready to be launched.
This time Adolay managed to wriggle out of her position, but being unable to swim she could only cling helplessly to the kayak. Nootka, equally helpless, clung to the canoe. Fortunately Anteek could swim like a fish, and bravely set to work to push both crafts towards the shore.
Thieving was practiced at this place in a more scientific manner than they had before remarked; and the natives insisted upon being paid for the wood and other things supplied to the ships, with which Captain Cook scrupulously complied. This inlet was named King George's Sound, but it was afterwards ascertained that the natives called it Nootka Sound.
Only damages to the Columbia drove her down to Nootka in July, where Don Quadra, the new Spanish commander, and Captain Vancouver were in conference over those English ships seized by Martinez. To Quadra, Gray sold the little Adventure, pioneer of American shipbuilding on the Pacific, for seventy-five otter skins.
In this vessel he had sailed in 1789, on one of those casual expeditions to the northwest coast, in quest of furs. In the course of the voyage, the captain left a small schooner, named the Fair American, at Nootka, with a crew of five men, commanded by his son, a youth of eighteen. She was to follow on in the track of the Eleanor.
Southward, toward Nootka, were hosts of foreign ships Gray and Kendrick and Ingraham from Boston, Vancouver from England, Meares from East India, Quadra from New Spain, private ventures outfitted by Astor from New York. If Russia were to preserve her hunting-grounds, no time should be lost. Baranof met the difficulties like a commander of guerilla warfare.
On concluding his narrative the excited lad applied himself to his yet untasted piece of blubber, and Nootka plied him with questions, while Oolalik rose and went off to assist his comrades, whose voices could now be heard as they shouted to the women and children of the colony to come and help them to carry up the meat. Soon afterwards the Mangivik family received another visitor.
But if actual accomplishments count, these pilots with their ragged peon crews, half-bloods of Aztec woman and Spanish adventurer, deserve higher rank in the roll of Pacific coast exploration than history has yet accorded them. England, it may be believed, did not calmly submit to seeing the ships and forts of her traders seized at Nootka.
Ten years earlier as Secretary of State, while England and Spain seemed about to come to blows over the Nootka Sound affair, he had approached both France and Spain to see whether the United States might not acquire the island of New Orleans or at least a port near the mouth of the river "with a circum-adjacent territory, sufficient for its support, well-defined, and extraterritorial to Spain."
By degrees they began to breathe more freely, and at last some went out to seek repose in their own huts, while the inmates of Mangivik's dwelling began to turn in for the night. Nootka and Adolay retired to the boudoir, and the men, drawing bear or seal-skins over them, lay down, each where he had feasted. Nazinred alone remained sitting up, the victim of unsatisfied craving.
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