1779.] DEATH OF COOK. 157 



Leaving Unalashka on the 27th of October, the English ships 

 continued their voyage southward to the Sandwich Islands, of which 

 the two largest, called Owyhee and Mowee, (Hawaii and Mauai,) 

 were first discovered in the latter part of November. They passed 

 the winter on the western side of Owyhee, in a harbor called Kara- 

 Tcooa Bay ; and there, on the 16th of February, 1779, the gallant 

 and generous Cook was murdered by the natives, in an affray. 



Captain Charles Clerke, who succeeded to the command of the 

 expedition after this melancholy event, endeavored, in the summer 

 of 1779, to effect a passage through the Arctic Sea to the Atlantic. 

 With this view, he left the Sandwich Islands in March, and, on the 

 29th of April, reached the harbor of Petropawlowsk, in the Bay of 

 Avatscha, the principal port of the Russians on the North Pacific, 

 where the English were received with the utmost kindness by the 

 officers of the government ; and their ships were objects of the 

 greatest curiosity to the people, being the first from any foreign 

 country which had ever visited that part of the world. After some 

 days spent in Kamtchatka, Clerke sailed for Bering's Strait, beyond 

 which, however, he was unable to advance, in any direction, so far 

 as in the preceding year, in consequence of the great accumulation 

 of the ice. His health at that time being, moreover, in a very pre- 

 carious state, he returned to Petropawlowsk, near which he died, on 

 the 22d of August. 



Lieutenant John Gore next assumed the direction of the enter- 

 prise : but the ships were considered, by him and the other officers, 

 unfit, from the bad condition of their bottoms and rigging, to en- 

 counter the shocks of another season in that tempestuous quarter 

 of the ocean ; and it was, thereupon, determined that they should 

 direct their course immediately for England. They accordingly 

 sailed from Petropawlowsk in October, and in the beginning of 

 December they anchored at the mouth of the River Tygris, near 

 Canton. 



With the stay of the English ships in China are connected some 

 circumstances, which gave additional importance to the discoveries 

 effected in their expedition. 



It has already been mentioned that, during the voyage along the 

 north-west coasts of America, the officers and seamen had obtained 

 from the natives at Nootka, Prince William's Sound, and other 

 places which they visited, a quantity of furs, in exchange for knives, 

 old clothes, buttons, and other trifles. The 5 ^ furs were collected, 



