Early RcIatio)is hcttvccn the United States and China. 39 



ton, New York, Philadelphia, Salem, and occasionally from 

 Boston. They had for their object seal skins, not sea otter skins: 

 they obtained them not by barter but by killing the seals them- 

 selves : and they were mostly in the Southern, not the Northern 

 Hemisphere. The usual plan of the voyages was to spend one 

 or two seasons sealing at the Falklands, Massafuero, or at some 

 of the islands where seals were plentiful ; then to proceed to 

 Canton, to exchange their furs for China goods and then to 

 return home by way of the Cape of Good Hope. One vessel 

 often made several voyages, leaving part of its crew on the seal 

 islands to collect skins until it should return. 



These voyages had their origin almost simultaneously with 

 those of the Northwest Coast. About 1785 or 1786 the ship 

 "States," owned by Lady Hadley, was sent out on an experi- 

 mental voyage. Thirteen thousand skins were taken, brought to 

 New York, and shipped to Calcutta and Canton in the brig 

 "Eleonora," about the time that Kendrick and Gray first left 

 Boston. •'' In 1790, acting on the information obtained from 

 this voyage, Elijah Austin of New Haven fitted out two vessels 

 and sent them to the Falklands and South Georgia. One of 

 these proceeded to Canton with its skins and returned by way 

 of the Cape of Good Hope after a three years' absence."'- In 

 1792, Magee obtained eleven thousand seal skins at St. Ambrose, 

 and found sealing well established on the Falkland Islands. 

 In March, 1793, Delano met at Canton the "Eliza," of New 

 York, William R. Stewart, Master. She had come from Massa- 

 fuero and had a cargo of thirty-eight thousand skins. °^ In 

 February, 1793, the Macartney Mission found on the Island of 

 Amsterdam a number of men who had been left there to collect 

 skins while their vessel, a ship fitted out at the Isle of France 

 and owned by Americans and French, should go to the North- 



-^ The Diary of Mr. Ebenezer Townsend, Jr., tlie supercargo of the 

 sealing ship "Neptune" on her voyage to the South Pacific and Canton ; 

 in papers of New Haven Colony Hist'l Society, vol. 4, New Haven, 1888. 

 pp. 1-115. p. 3. Shaw, Journals, pp. 295-6, mentions her as in Macao 

 early in 1788. 



"^ Townsend, Diary, p. 3, et sqq. 



"^ These sold for only $16,000, a very low price. 



