[42] Gray and Ingraham to Quadra, Nootka Sound, August 3, 1792. (Greenhow, Oregon and California, 414.) (Prejudiced.)
[43] Colnett, Voyage, vii.
[44] Spanish translation of an extract from the “License from the governor and company of merchants of Great Britain for trading in the South Sea and other parts of America, to Richard Cadman Etches and Company to trade in the places where the South Sea Company has the privilege by an act of Parliament.” (MS. Arch. Gen. de Indias, Seville, 90-3-18.) It was signed by the secretary of the company and dated August 4, 1785. They were forbidden to trade south of 45° on the northwest coast. (See Colnett to the Viceroy, October 1, 1789; Arch. Gen. de Indias, Seville, 90-3-21.)
[45] Spanish translation of Colnett to the Viceroy, October 1, 1789. (Id.)
[46] Meares, Memorial, appendix to Voyages. Also Colnett to the Viceroy, October 1, 1789. (MS. Arch. Gen. de Indias, Seville, 90-3-21.) The latter represents Colnett as the chief promoter, while the former represents Meares in that capacity. Colnett says that the Prince of Wales had broken her keel and was not in a condition to make another such a voyage, so that the correspondents of his company offered him the Argonaut. It seems that some difficulty had arisen over the fact that the license which Colnett bore was for his use on the Prince of Wales. He told the Viceroy that if he had apprehended any disadvantage arising from his change of ships it would have been easy to have named the new ship the Prince of Wales also. He had not considered it necessary.
[47] Meares, Memorial, appendix to Voyages. Inclosure II.
[48] Translation of the instructions given by the owners of the English ship Argonaut to its captain, James Colnett, not dated. (MS. Arch. Gen. de Indias, Seville, 90-3-18.)
[49] This policy of protecting allied chiefs against their enemies was begun by Meares during the previous year. He loaned firearms and furnished ammunition to the Nootka Indians for an expedition against a neighboring tribe which had committed depredations on one of their villages. (See Meares, Voyages, 196.)
[50] Nootka was not especially mentioned, but the intention was so evident that mention was unnecessary. The option as to the place in which it was to be established probably did not refer to a possible choice between Nootka Sound and some other part of the coast, but to the selection of the most favorable spot on the sound. As showing Meares’s tendency to distort facts, he says in his Memorial: “Colnett was directed to fix his residence at Nootka Sound, and, with that in view, to erect a substantial house on the spot which your memorialist had purchased the preceding year, as will appear by a copy of his instructions hereto annexed.”
[51] Meares, Memorial, appendix to Voyages, Inclosure II; and MS. Arch. Gen. de Indias, 90-3-18.