190 NEW EXPEDITION FROM MACAO. [1789. 



1789, to Nootka, as captain, and agent for the proprietors on the 

 American coast, accompanied by the Princess Royal, under Captain 

 William Hudson. 



The management of the affairs of the association at Macao ap- 

 pears to have been committed entirely to Meares, who drew up the 

 instructions for Colnett. From these instructions, of which a copy 

 is appended by Meares to his Memorial, it is evident that there was 

 really an intention to found a permanent establishment on some 

 part of the north-west coast of America, although no spot is desig- 

 nated as its site, and no hint is given of any acquisition of territory 

 having been already made at or near Nootka Sound. Indeed, the 

 only reference to that place, in the whole paper, is contained in the 

 words, " We recommend you, if possible, to form a treaty with the 

 various chiefs, particularly at Nootka." Yet Meares, in his Memo- 

 rial, strangely enough says, " Mr. Colnett was directed to fix his 

 residence at Nootka Sound, and, with that view, to erect a substan- 

 tial house on the spot which your memorialist had purchased in the 

 preceding year, as will appear by a copy of his instructions hereunto 

 annexed." The Argonaut and Princess Royal were, moreover, 

 certainly navigated under the British flag ; there being no object in 

 using any other, as they were both provided with licenses from the 

 East India and the South Sea Companies, which afforded them the 

 requisite authorization.* 



Whilst these vessels were on their way to Nootka Sound, their 

 first place of destination on the coast, the brig Iphigenia, and 

 schooner North-West America, belonging to the same association, 

 though under Portuguese colors, arrived in that bay from the 

 Sandwich Islands, where they had passed the winter, agreeably to 

 the instructions of Mr. Meares. They entered the sound on the 

 20th of April, in the most wretched condition imaginable. The 

 Iphigenia was a mere wreck ; according to the journal of Douglas, 

 her supercargo or captain, annexed to the Memorial of Meares, 



* The following account of the occurrences at Nootka in the summer of 1789 is 

 taken from — the journal or narrative of the voyage of Meares, and the documents 

 attached to it, consisting of his Memorial to Parliament, and papers in proof, among 

 which is especially worthy of notice the journal of Douglas, the captain or supercargo 

 of the Iphigenia — the journal of Colnett's voyage, in 1793, in which some of those 

 circumstances are related in a note, at page 96 — the journal of Vancouver's voyage 

 in 1792 — the letter addressed by the American Captains Gray and Ingraham to the 

 Spanish commandant at Nootka, in 1792, which will be found at length among the 

 Proofs and Illustrations, at the end of this volume, under the letter C — and the 

 memorials and other papers relative to the dispute which ensued between Great 

 Britain, in the Proofs and Illustrations, under the letter D. 



