Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/29

 EARLY NAVIGATION OF THE STRAITS OF FUCA 21 "the tract of land that had first been circumnavigated by us", the island of Quadra and Vancouver. The first edition of Van- couver's Voyage appeared in 1798. At that time Kendrick was dead; but Gray was alive until 1806. If Vancouver's claims clashed with either Gray's or Kendrick's actual work, it is reasonable to suppose that Gray would have been heard from on the point. The view of subsequent writers on the question of this voyage are only valuable as the opinions of experts. In 1840, when Greenhow published his Memoir, Historical and Political, on the North West Coast of North America, in speaking of this alleged voyage, after stating that it was in his opinion an exaggeration by Meares of Gray's explorations in the strait of Fuca, he goes on to say on page 92: "The ac- "count that such a voyage had been made was incorrect; but "Captain Gray collected information from the natives of the "coasts, which left no doubt on his mind that the passage com- "municated northward of Nootka with the Pacific by an open- ing to which he had in the summer of 1789 given the names of "Pintard's Sound, but which is now generally called Queen "Charlotte Sound. This opinion was verified in 1792 by Van- "couver and Galiano and Valdes". As Librarian of the De- partment of State Greenhow had in his possession (see the footnote on page 89 of the Memoir) conclusive proof that this voyage had never been actually made. Yet despite this published opinion of 1840 and the posses- sion of this conclusive proof to the contrary, we find Greenhow in his History of Oregon, 1846, pages 216-219, arguing that the voyage may have been made, and that this is the one state- ment of Meares which can be relied on. I place the contradic- tion before you. I do not attempt to explain it. Professor Meany simply states the uncertainty prevailing on the point, with apparently a slight inclination to doubt that the voyage was ever made. See Meany's Vancouver's Dis- covery of Puget Sound, pages 32-33.