Page:A History of the Pacific Northwest.djvu/40

Rh which seems to have received the government's blessing, with no financial help, sent forward the same year two well equipped vessels, named the King George and the Queen Charlotte, under command respectively of Nathaniel Portlock and George Dixon, both of whom were naval officers on leave.

Discoveries of Dixon, Barclay, Meares, Dufifin. The King George and Queen Charlotte were not the first vessels to sail for the northwest coast in response to the new commercial stimulus. But we are interested in the way the fur trade influenced exploration and we know from the journal of Captain Dixon that important results aside from commercial gains flowed from the voyage of the Queen Charlotte in the years 1786 to 1787. Dixon, in sailing south from Alaska, discovered that the land lying just below fifty-four degrees was an island and he named it Queen Charlotte's Island. He explored nearly its entire circuit and named several points on what he supposed was the mainland to the east, among them Cape Pitt, Cape Chatham, and Cape Dalrymple which outlined Dixon's Strait.

Other traders from Macao in China and from Ostend were on the coast during the years 1786 to 1788 and their commanders, Captain John Meares and Captain