PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 



Circumstances which it is unnecessary here to mention, 

 prevented the publication of the first edition of the work in 

 the United States for more than a year, though it was issued 

 in London, by Mr. John Murray, in June, 1844. Con- 

 gress having by a recent Act most liberally ordered the 

 purchase of fifteen hundred copies for the use of the gen- 

 eral government, and for distribution among the States and 

 in foreign countries, it has been necessary to print the new 

 edition now offered ; in which errors have been corrected, 

 many portions, including the whole of the Geography, and 

 nearly the whole last chapter of the History, have been writ- 

 ten anew, and an important document has been added to 

 the Proofs and Illustrations. 



The first edition, thus published in Europe, has not re- 

 mained unnoticed : it has been reviewed generally with ex- 

 treme severity of language, and with corresponding looseness 

 of criticism, in London journals, and has afforded large 

 materials for another work on the same subject, published 

 in Paris, under the auspices of the French government. 

 The author, however, observes with pleasure, that in all, 

 even the best of these articles, the reviewers carefully ab- 

 stain from the most important points touched in his work ; 

 while all his admissions are cited as definitive. On the 

 accounts and views here presented of Drake's Visit to the 

 North-West Coast, of the pretended British Settlement at 

 Nootka, of the discovery and survey of the Columbia river, 

 of the character and duration of the Nootka Convention, of 

 the alleged reservation on the part of the British govern- 



