222 VOYAGE OF MALASPINA. [1791. 



Flattery, where the Spaniards attempted, in 1792, to form a settle- 

 ment. Having performed this duty as well as was possible under 

 the circumstances in which he was placed, Q-uimper returned to 

 Nootka, where he arrived in the beginning of August.* 



On the 2d of June, 1791, Captain Alexandro Malaspina,f an 

 accomplished Italian navigator in the service of Spain, who was 

 then engaged in an expedition of survey and discovery in the 

 Pacific, arrived on the coast, near Mount San Jacinto, or Edge- 

 cumb, with his two ships, the Descubierta, commanded by himself, 

 and the Atrevida, under Captain Bustamente. The principal object 

 of their visit was to determine the question as to the existence of 

 the Strait of Anian, described in the account of Maldonado's 

 pretended voyage, the credibility of which had been, in the pre- 

 ceding year, affirmed, by the French geographer Buache, in a 

 memoir read before the Academy of Sciences of Paris. With this 

 view, they carefully examined the coast between Prince William's 

 Sound and Mount Fairweather, running nearly in the direction of 

 the 60th parallel, under which Maldonado had placed the entrance 

 of his strait into the Pacific, searching the various bays and inlets 

 which there open to the sea, particularly that called by the English 

 Admiralty Bay, situated at the foot of Mount St. Elias. They 

 found, however, — doubtless to their satisfaction, — no passage 

 leading northward or eastward from the Pacific ; and they became 

 convinced that the whole coast thus surveyed was bordered by an 

 unbroken chain of lofty mountains. Want of time prevented them 

 from continuing their examinations farther south ; and they could 

 only, in passing, determine the latitudes and longitudes of a few 



* The journal of this voyage is among the manuscripts obtained from the hydro- 

 graphical department of Madrid : annexed to it is a memoir on the manners, customs, 

 and language, of the Indians about Nootka Sound, translated from the English of 

 Joseph Ingraham, the mate of the American ship Columbia, who wrote it, at the 

 request of Martinez, in 1789. 



t The journals of Malaspina's expedition have never been published. A sketch 

 of his voyage along the north-west coasts of America is given in the Introduction to 

 the Journal of Galiano and Valdes, in which the highest, and, in some places, the 

 most extravagant, praise is bestowed on the officers engaged in it. Yet — will it be 

 believed? — the name of Malaspina does not appear there or in any other part of the 

 book. The unfortunate commander, having given some offence to Godoy, better 

 known as the Prince of the Peace, who then ruled Spain without restriction, was, on 

 his return to Europe in 1794, confined in a dungeon at Corunna, and there kept as a 

 prisoner until 1802, when he was liberated, after the peace of Amiens, at the express 

 desire cf Napoleon. The name of one who had thus sinned could not be allowed to 

 appear on the pages of a work published officially, by the Spanish government, for 

 the purpose of vindicating the claims of its navigators. 



