Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/29



SPAIN AND ENGLAND QUARREL OVER OREGON 19

been spending a few days up the Sound had worked on Martinez's suspicions through the clause in the papers of the Iphigenia requiring the captain to take Spanish vessels and carry their men to Macao to be tried for piracy. To enter a Spanish port with such instructions, and uncertainly translated as they were for Martinez, led him to take the steps he did and to exhibit the subsequent vacillation with the Iphigenia. Though Martinez acted on the principle that discretion is the better part of valor with the Iphigenia, his attitude had be- come suspicious. He found it necessary, with Captain Hudson of the Princess Royal, to establish that the right of priority was with the Spanish through Perez's voyage in 1774 rather than with the English through Cook's discoveries of 1778.

The fact that the North West America, the first vessel ever built on the coast, was built on soil claimed by the Spanish may account for some of the insistence of Martinez that it should be delivered to him for a consideration.

When the Argonaut, under Captain Colnett, appeared at the mouth of the harbor it looks a little arbitrary for Martinez to order her towed into port and anchored between the two Spanish ships. But this English vessel belonged to the same concern that had been using the shores of Nootka Sound for a shipyard, that had erected structures there and her own papers actually contained instructions "to establish a permanent trading post or factory," the site of which would naturally have been Nootka. Colnett with such a commission from his superiors, and a weak mind, would have difficulty in not betraying his designs to the Spanish commander and lead him to demand Colnett's passport, instructions and invoice of cargo. Furthermore, Martinez waiting for Colnett to find these, "noted that the cargo of the Argonaut contained supplies of expected vessels and material for building others." Further, Colnett admitted "that he came as a governor of a colony." This meant complications that only tact and diplomacy could have straitened without an explosion, but Colnett flies off the handle.