$6 Kenneth S. Latourette, 



About 1802 the trade to the Northwest Coast took on a new- 

 phase, trading and seaHng voyages along the Cahfornia coast. 

 This was due partly to the increasing difficulty of obtaining skins 

 by barter with the northern Indians, and partly to newly dis- 

 covered sources of furs. In 1802 the "Lelia Byrd," Cleveland, 

 master, coasted along California, trading for furs with the 

 Spanish settlements.^' In 1803 the "Alexander," Brown, master, 

 and in 1804 the "Hazard"^* and the "Lelia Byrd" vmder Shaler, 

 Cleveland's partner,^'^ did the same. It was largely illegal trade 

 and ships engaged in it were in danger of capture and confisca- 

 tion.*'^ In 1803 the "O'Cain" of New York obtained Indian 

 hunters from the Russians at Sitka and went south, hunting on 

 shares. ■'^ In 1805 John D'Wolf, master of the "June," finding 

 barter unsuccessful, determined to go to California, but sold his 

 ship to the Russians before carrying out his plan.'*- In 1806 



couver, Voyage, 2:135). In 1803 the ship "Boston," John Salter, Master, 

 was attacked by the natives at Nootka Sound in revenge for a fancied 

 insuU, his vessel was captured, and all but two of the crew were 

 murdered. (The Adventures of John Jewett, only survivor of the crew 

 of the ship Boston, during a captivity of nearly three years among the 

 Indians of Nootka Sound in Vancouver Island. Ed. by Robert Brown. 

 London, 1896. Secondary accounts are in Bancroft, Hist, of N. W. Coast, 

 1:312, and in Meany, Vancouver's Discovery of Puget Sound, pp. 39-43.) 

 In 1803 and 1804 the "Atahualpa" of Boston, Adams master, lost some 

 men by an Indian attack (page 171 of Shaler [?] Journal of a Voyage 

 Between China and the Northwestern Coast of America, made in 1804. 

 In the American Register or General Repository, vol. 3 (1808) pp. 137-175). 



^'Cleveland, Voyages of a Merchant Navigator, and Cleveland, Voyages, 

 1 : 155-249- 



^* Herbert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 7 v., San Francisco, 

 1884-1890. 2: 15. 



^^ Shaler, Voyage between China and the Northwest Coast. 



*" "The Mercury" was captured and condemned in 1813, Bancroft, Hist, 

 of Calif., 2:268. He quotes Mercury, Expediente de investigacion sabre 

 Captura de la fragata American "Mercurio" 1813, MS. Several other 

 ships were similarly treated in 1816. Ibid., 2 : 275. 



^^ Bancroft, Hist, of N. W. Coast, 1:319. He quotes Boston on the 

 N. W. Coast, MS., pp. 11-12. 



*^John D'Wolf, A Voyage to the North Pacific and a Journey through 

 Siberia more than half a century ago, Cambridge, 1861 ; and Patterson, 

 Narrative of Adventures and Sufferings, are accounts of the same voyage 

 by two men who were on it. 



