17S7.] VOYAGES OF PORTLOCK AND DIXON. 169 



brought by the ships, around the Cape of Good Hope, to England. 

 Portlock and Dixon were both intelligent men, well acquainted with 

 the theory and practice of navigation, and their ships were well 

 provided with instruments for ascertaining geographical positions ; 

 the narratives published by them, after their return to England, 

 though tedious to the general reader, from the minuteness of the 

 details of trifling or personal matters, and not always strictly true, 

 are, nevertheless, valuable, as showing the history of the fur trade 

 in the North Pacific, and of the discovery of the American coasts 

 of that ocean, between the time of Cook's expedition and the year 

 1788. 



Portlock and Dixon left England together in August, 1785, and, 

 passing around Cape Horn, and through the group of the Sandwich 

 Islands, they reached Cook's River in July, 1786. There they met 

 some Russians, though no establishment had been then formed by 

 that nation east of the Island of Kodiak ; and, after a short stay, 

 they proceeded to Nootka Sound, where they expected to spend 

 the winter. They were, however, unable to enter that bay, or any 

 other place on the American coast, in consequence of the violence 

 of the winds, and were obliged to return to the Sandwich Islands, 

 where they remained, very uncomfortably, until the spring of 1787 : 

 they then again went to the coasts about Cook's River and Prince 

 William's Sound, in the latter of which places they found Captain 

 Meares, with his vessel frozen up, more than half of his crew dead, 

 and the remainder suffering dreadfully from scurvy, as already men- 

 tioned. The manner in which Meares was treated by his country- 

 men on this occasion, has been represented by him, in the narrative 

 of his voyages, in a manner very different from that in which it 

 appears on the pages of Portlock and Dixon ; the latter asserting 

 that they rendered him every assistance in their power, while he, 

 on the other hand, declares that their conduct towards him was 

 selfish and inhuman in the extreme. 



At Prince William's Sound Dixon left Portlock, and proceeded 

 along the coast, eastward, to the inlet on the south side of Mount 

 San Jacinto, or Edgecumb, called Port Remedios by Bodega, but to 

 which he thought proper to give the name of Norfolk Sound. He 

 " had, indeed, heard that the Spaniards anchored very near this 

 place in 1775 ; " but this account, " he was afraid, was not absolutely 

 to be depended on," although Maurelle's journal, containing accu- 

 rate descriptions of that part of the coast, had been published in 

 English, at London, in 1781. In like manner, Dixon claimed the 

 22 



