234 REPORT OP NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1888. 



notably Captain Meares (1786), of the East India Company, and Cap- 

 tains Portlock and Dixon (1787), of the King George's Soaud Com- 

 pany. In 1788 several American ships, representing a Boston com- 

 pany, also appeared on the coast. In 1789 in the Washington, Captain 

 Gray explored the east coast of Queen Charlotte Islands, and, in 1791, 

 Captain Ingraham anchored in a harbor in the southeast part of this 

 same archipelago. In the same year, Marchand, representing a French 

 company, also traded with these islanders. . 



In 1 792-'94 Captain Vancouver made his admirable reconnaissance of 

 the coast in search of a northwest passage to the Pacific from the 

 Atlantic. 



In 1793 Mackenzie descended the Salmon Eiver and reached salt 

 water in latitude 52^ 21' 1^., in the country of the Bilqula. 



With the formal occupation, by Baranoif, of a fortified post at Sitka 

 in 1800, the natives of the Northwest coast may be said to have entered 

 upon a new phase in their civilization, due to contact with the whites. 

 A few years later this post was destroyed and the occupants massa- 

 cred by the Tlingit; but, in 1805, Baranoff and Lisiansky re-established 

 it on the site now occupied by the town of Sitka, called by them New 

 Archangel. From this time to the purchase of Alaska by the United 

 States in 1867, the history of this region is largely the history of the 

 Kussian-American and the Hudson Bay Company, the latter of which 

 still continues to be such a powerful commercial factor in British 

 America. 



