256 END OF THE NOOTKA CONTROVERSY [1796. 



having completed, in the most effectual manner, the most extensive 

 nautical survey which had ever been made in one expedition.* 



No account has yet transpired of the negotiation between the 

 courts of London and Madrid, respecting the extent of territory, and 

 the buildings on the north-west coasts of America, which were to be 

 restored to British subjects, after the reference of that question to 

 them by their commissioners. Lieutenant Broughton, who had 

 been despatched to England by Vancouver in 1793, was thence 

 sent by the government on this business to Madrid; and, on his 

 return to London, he was ordered to proceed to the North Pacific, 

 in the sloop Providence, for the purpose of surveying the coasts of 

 Asia, near Japan, being commissioned, at the same time, to receive 

 possession of the territories at Nootka, in case the restitution should 

 not have been previously made. He accordingly sailed from Eng- 

 land for Nootka, where, in April, 1796, he was informed, by letters 

 left in charge of Maquinna,f " that the Spaniards had delivered up 

 the port of Nootka, &c, to Lieutenant Pierce, of the marines, 

 agreeably to the mode of restitution settled between the two courts," 



* Vancouver's journal and charts were published at London in 1798, before which 

 period the navigator had sunk into the grave. His journal is a simple record of obser- 

 vations and occurrences, written in a plain and intelligible, though homely and un- 

 pretending style ; and it is entirely free from those displays of imagination, in the 

 shape of long political and philosophical disquisitions with which such works are 

 often overloaded. The charts and views of the land are admirably executed, and their 

 accuracy has been since generally confirmed. We are, in fact, indebted to Vancouver 

 and his officers for our knowledge of the outline of the whole western coasts of Amer- 

 ica, from the peninsula of California to the peninsula of Aliaska ; of which all the 

 principal points have been ascertained with the utmost precision, so that succeeding 

 navigators have only had to make corrections in the intermediate spaces. Vancouver 

 himself was certainly a man of great courage, perseverance, and professional skill, 

 possessing also good temper and good feelings, except with regard to citizens of the 

 United States, against whom and their country he cherished the most bitter animosity. 

 While admitting, with frankness, the merits of subjects of other nations, as discoverers 

 or as men, he did not hesitate to adopt unworthy means to deprive the Americans of 

 the reputation which they had justly earned by their labors in exploring, and to blacken 

 their characters as individuals : for this object, he made use of misrepresentations, 

 misstatements, insinuations, and concealments, whenever occasions presented them- 

 selves ; and that which he would have commended in a Briton, or excused in a Rus- 

 sian or a Spaniard, became criminal in his eyes when committed by a citizen of the 

 hated republic. He, nevertheless, appears to have given satisfaction to all with 

 whom he came personally into communication. Ingraham speaks of him with the 

 utmost respect, and acknowledges his obligations for the uniform kindness of the 

 British navigator. In the Sandwich Islands his memory is universally cherished. 

 He was long expected to return and establish himself there, as a commissioner from 

 his sovereign ; and he probably would have been admitted among the number of 

 their gods, if the ship which he is said to have promised to Tamahamaha had ever 

 Deen sent. 



t Journal of a Voyage in the Pacific, by Captain Robert Broughton, p. 50. 



