28 ANCIENT WARRIORS

fitted out for a trading expedition. After obtaining a
large quantity of skins from the Haidas, he sailed
Southward between the islands and the mainland.

The next party to sail on a trading expedition to these
islands was fitted out in Boston, U.S.A. Captain
Robert Gray was given the command of the sloop
Washington, and thinking that he had discovered new
territory, named it Washington Island. He appeared
to be unaware that he had found a group of islands.

About 1788 a man named Mears built a ship called
the North West America at Nootka, and dispatched
her on a trading trip to the islands with Robert Fulton
as Captain. The venture was successful and profitable,
so it was followed by the dispatch of the Iphigenia under
Captain Douglas. Douglas sailed up Hecate Straits
between the islands and the mainland. He rediscovered
Massett Inlet and called it McIntyre’s Bay, what is now
known as Parry’s Passage he named Cox’s Channel.
Douglas was, as far as is known, the first European to
land on these islands, and he was hospitably received.

Another Boston schooner commanded by a man
named Joseph Ingraham spent the Summer trading for
furs around the islands, and as is too common imposed
a set of new and irrelevant names upon various
prominent features.

Captain Gray, of Boston, as Master of the Columbia
visited the East coast of the islands in the Autumn of
1791.

The first chart of the islands was published by Captain
Etienne Marchand of the ship Solide. He visited them
in 1791 and explored Cloak Bay and Parry Passage.
After purchasing a large quantity of furs, he sailed
down the West coast of Graham Island for some
distance and then made a bee-line for Barclay Sound.

In 1792 the Spanish dispatched a fleet of three vessels,