26 ANCIENT WARRIORS

to give a name to the Queen Charlotte group of
islands.

The next visitors came from Bombay in 1786. This
was the date of the visit of Messrs. Lowrie and Guise,
Masters of the ships Cook and Enterprise, in the course
of a trading expedition for furs, but little information
can be obtained from their log. They merely state that
they sailed in a direct course from the Queen Charlotte
Sound (which they named) to Prince William Sound;
so that by inference they must have passed down the
inside channel of the Queen Charlotte Islands. The
first trading expedition that was made direct to these
islands appears to be that of Captain Hanna, in the
Sea Otter, a brig of about sixty tons, which sailed from
China and reached Nootka Sound in August, 1785. He
then journeyed Northwards and it is almost certain traded
on the Queen Charlotte Islands. They eventually
returned to Canton and sold their cargo for £21,000.
In 1786 two British Captains, Portlock and Dixon, in
the King George and the Queen Charlotte (two ships
fitted out by the London Company of Adventurers)
coasted up from Vancouver Island along the West
coast of these Islands as far as Hippa Island. They
did not see any suitable harbour in which to anchor,
neither did they see any of the inhabitants of the islands.
They, therefore, turned round and sailed again South-
ward. Captain Dixon of the Queen Charlotte, how-
ever, returned, and from July ist to August 3rd, 1788,
spent more than a month coasting and trading on the
West coast. He it was who gave the name to the
islands which they still bear. He also named Dixon’s
Entrance, North Island, Cloak Bay, Hippa Island,
Rennell’s Sound, Cape St. James and Houston Stewart
Channel. It is not, however, recorded that Captain
Dixon landed at any of these points, but in his reports