Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 12.djvu/34

 26 F. W. HOWAY ship in the service of the East India Company", and that Mr. Neville had "received the particulars of the track" from Cap- tain Kendrick. To this Captain Dixon answered that, "Hav- ing never seen or heard of this gentleman (i.e. Mr. Neville) "before, I have no right to doubt the verbal information he "may have given you, neither would I have it understood that 'I ever did. All my thoughts on this subject are that before "you suffered such a track to appear on your chart, you should "have seen it delineated on paper either with latitudes and "longitudes, or the vessel's run". So that on Meares's own admission the track was put down on second-hand information. In the heated discussion, noth- ing was ever heard from Mr. Neville ; we have only Meares's statement as to what was actually told him. It might almost have been concluded that Mr. Neville was a sort of masculine "Mrs. Harris", the friend of "Sairey Gamp". But further in- vestigation leads to the conclusion that he was the first mate of the East Indiaman in which Meares returned to England. We know from various sources that the Columbia and the Washington spent the winter of 1788-9 near Friendly Cove, Nootka sound. During that time it was discovered that Nootka was an island ; as shown by the following entry in Haswell's log, under date, March 16, 1789: "The sound is navigable "near 20 leagues where it again meets the sea in another out- "let near as large as Nootka (i.e. Esperanza inlet) about seven "leagues along shore to the westward". On Ingraham's map Nootka island is marked, "Kendrick's island" ; and in his jour- nal we find: "Massachusetts sound (Esperanza inlet) was "so named by Captain Kendrick, who, I believe, was the first "that ever passed through it with a vessel, but the Indians "often informed us there was two ways of entering Nootka "sound. Indeed, we were convinced of it from seeing canoes "go out past Friendly Cove and come back down the sound". These quotations show that Kendrick circumnavigated Nootka Island.