[13] The Merchant Proprietors to John Meares, esq., Commanding the Felice and Iphigenia, China, December 24, 1787. (Id., Appendix I.)
[14] Id.
[15] See [Chapter IV] below.
[16] Meares, Memorial, Appendix to Voyages. He explains that this ruse was at first successful, but was later discovered through the financial failure of the Portuguese merchant who had allowed his name to be thus used.
[17] Dixon, Further Remarks on Meares’s Voyages, 55. His hostility to Meares prejudices any statement made by him. See above, p. 287, [note b].
[18] Bancroft, Northwest Coast, 1, 193. This author devotes some 10 pages to a discussion of this expedition.
Greenhow, Oregon and California, 172-178, attempts to prove that the expedition was purely Portuguese. His account is too prejudiced to be of much value. The chief purpose of his book was to prove that America had a better claim to the Oregon country than England. If this expedition had been purely Portuguese, England could have acquired no possible claim through it.
[19] Meares. Voyages, 2, 3.
[20] Id., 88.
[21] Id., 104. This date should probably be changed to May 12. When the English and Spanish not at Nootka in 1789 their calendars were one day apart. (See below, p. 312, [note a].) Since there are no conflicting dates given for the events at Nootka in 1788, those found in the journals of the English commanders are followed.