170 . VOYAGES OF DUNCAN AND COLNETT. [1787. 



discovery of the land farther south, between the 54th and the 52d 

 degrees of latitude, on the ground that it had not been seen by 

 Cook, though it is specially marked on the chart of that navigator, 

 as found by the Spaniards in 1775 ; and, having become convinced, 

 from the reports of the natives, that this land was separated from 

 the American continent by water, he bestowed on it the name of 

 Queen Charlotte's Island, and on the passage immediately north of 

 it, that of Dixon's Entrance. From this part of the coast Dixon 

 proceeded to Nootka, and thence, by the Sandwich Islands, to 

 Canton, where he rejoined Portlock, who had passed the whole of 

 the trading season on the coast, between Prince William's Sound 

 and Mount St. Elias. 



In China, Portlock and Dixon found the price of furs much 

 reduced, from the great quantities of those articles which had 

 entered the country during the season ; so great, indeed, was the 

 fall in their value, that, according to La Perouse, they were higher 

 at Petropawlowsk than at Canton during the whole of 1787. From 

 this circumstance, and also from the alleged unfairness of the East 

 India Company's agents towards them, in the sale of their cargoes, 

 the profits of the voyage of the King George and the Queen 

 Charlotte, from the teas and silks which they carried to England, 

 were not sufficient to cover the expenses of their expedition. 



Before Portlock and Dixon quitted the north-west coasts of 

 America, in 1787, they met two other vessels, the Princess Royal, 

 commanded by Captain Duncan, and the Prince of Wales, under 

 Captain Colnett, which had been also sent, by the King George's 

 Sound Company, to prosecute the fur trade in the North Pacific. 

 Duncan, in the following year, ascertained the separation of Queen 

 Charlotte's Island from the main land, which had been assumed by 

 Dixon, and, before him, by La Perouse ; he also explored the sea 

 between that island and the continent, in which he discovered a 

 group of small islands, named by him the Princess Royal's Archi- 

 pelago ; and thence he ran down the coast, by Nootka Sound and 

 Cape Flattery, to the 47th degree of latitude, from which he took 

 his departure for the Sandwich Islands and China. 



The discovery of these islands, and of numerous openings in the 

 coast, which appeared to be the mouths of channels, from that part 

 of the Pacific, extending far eastward into the land, led to the 

 suspicion that the whole north-western division of America might be 

 a vast collection of islands ; and the old story of Admiral Fonte's 

 voyage began to gain credit. The islands and reputed islands in 



