166 VOYAGES OF PETERS, LOWRIE, AND MEARES. [1786. 



China, before the end of the year, furs worth more than twenty 

 thousand dollars, in return for the old clothes, iron, and trifles, 

 which he had carried out in the spring. 



In 1786, Hanna made another voyage to the coasts ; but he had 

 then to compete with traders from Bengal and England, in conse- 

 quence of which his profits were much less than in the preceding 

 voyage. In the same year, also, an attempt was made to establish 

 a direct trade between Macao and Kamtchatka, to be carried on 

 under the Portuguese flag. With this view, Captain Peters was 

 sent in the brig Lark to Petropawlowsk, where he made arrange- 

 ments with Schelikof, the head of the American Trading Company, 

 to supply them regularly with European and Chinese goods, taking 

 furs in return ; but the Lark was lost, with nearly all on board, on 

 Copper Island, one of the westernmost of the Aleutian Archipelago, 

 in her voyage back to China, and no attempt for the same purpose 

 was afterwards made. 



Voyages were, about the same time, made to the North Pacific, 

 in search of furs, by Captains Lowrie and Guise, in two small 

 vessels from Bombay, and by Captains Meares and Tipping, in two 

 others from Calcutta, all under the flag of the East India Company. 

 Lowrie and Guise went to Nootka Sound, and thence northward, 

 along the coasts, to Prince William's Sound, from which they pro- 

 ceeded to Macao. Meares and Tipping sailed to the Aleutian 

 Islands, and thence to Prince William's Sound, after leaving which 

 nothing was ever heard of Tipping or his vessel : Meares spent the 

 winter of 1786-7 in that sound, where more than half of his 

 crew died from want or scurvy. 



In the above-mentioned voyages, nothing of importance was 

 learned respecting the geography of North-west America. In order 

 to convey a clear idea of the extent and value of the discoveries 

 effected by the fur traders in the three years next ensuing, it should 

 be premised that, in the beginning of that period, the coast of the 

 American continent was supposed, according to the best accounts 

 and charts, to run in a regular, and almost unbroken, line north- 

 westward, from Cape Mendocino, near the 40th degree of latitude, 

 to Mount St. Elias, near the 60th ; the innumerable islands which 

 are now known to extend in chains between the continent and the 

 open Pacific Ocean, from the 48th degree to the 58th, being 

 regarded as the main land of North America. The western sides 

 of the most western of these islands had been examined, though 

 imperfectly, in their whole length, by the Spaniards, in 1774 and 



