BAKER.] AUTHORITIES. 45 



PORTLOCK AND DiXdN, 1 7S(i-S7. 



The King" George's Sound Company, organized as a commercial 

 partnership in May, 1785, fitted out two vessels for trading on the 

 northwest coast of America and China. One of these, the King George^ 

 was placed under the command of Capt. Nathaniel Portlock, the other, 

 the Queen Charlotte^ under the command of Capt. George Dixon. Both 

 of these officers had served under Cook in his voyage on the Alaskan 

 coast in 1778. The vessels departed from England on September 16, 

 1785 rounded Cape Horn, touched at the Hawaiian islands, and on 

 July 16, 1786, arrived in Cook inlet. Leaving this anchorage, the two 

 vessels cruised eastward and southward along the coast as far as Nootka 

 and went thence to the Hawaiian islands, arriving on December 1, 1786. 

 Here both remained until March 15, 1787, and then sailed together for 

 Prince William sound, arriving on April 25, and remaining there till 

 July 31, when the ships parted company and Portlock cruised east to 

 the vicinity of Sitka and thence via the Hawaiian islands and China 

 back to England. He made a few additions to the geographic knowl- 

 edo'c of the then almost unknown Alaska coast, sketched a few harbors, 

 and named a few places. Both Portlock and Dixon wrote accounts of 

 their voyages, which were published at London in 1789. Portlock's 

 is entitled A Voyage Round the World, etc., 4°, London, 1789. 



Pribilof, 1786. 



Gerassim Gavrilovich Pribilof, master in the Russian Navy, was the 

 son of one of the sailors who accompanied Bering in 1741. He entered 

 the service of the Lebedef-Lastochkin company in 1778. In 1786 he 

 sought for and discovered in Bering sea the breeding place of the fur 

 seals, the group of islands that now bear his name. He died in Sitka 

 in March, 1796. It does not appear that he published anything. 



Prospkctoes and Miners. 



Ever since the purchase of Alaska, in 1867, prospectors and miners 

 have visited it and gone from time to time here and there. Within 

 the last four or live years there have been several gold excitements and 

 grand rushes to the territory. These prospectors and miners rushing 

 in have named many features, though rarely in print. Subsequently 

 government explorers and surveyors have obtained these names from 

 prospectors' stakes or by word of mouth and have pablished them. 

 In this dictionary such names are, as far as practicable or known, 

 accredited to the prospectors and miners. 



Ray, 1881-188.3. 



Early in the eighties the leading nations of the world undertook 

 simultaneous exploration of the North Polar regions. The plan was 

 for each participating nation to establish as far north as practicable a 



