Tue Great JouRNEY 119

native escort was reduced to the chief’s son
alone.

Next morning (July 21) they put out at
six. After steering west for seven miles, they
turned up Labouchere Channel for seven miles,
then south-west down Dean Channel. Here
they had an unpleasant encounter which came
near to wrecking the expedition at the moment
of its success. Fifteen men in three canoes
appeared, and examined the party “with an
air of indifference and disdain”.

One of them in particular made me under-
stand, with an air of insolence, that a large
canoe had lately been in this bay, with people
in her like me, and that one of them, whom
he called Macubah, had fired on him and his
friends, and that Bensins had struck him on
the back with the flat part of his sword... .
At the same time he illustrated these circum-
stances by the assistance of my gun and
sword; and I do not doubt but he well deserved
the treatment which he described.

It so happened, by a strange coincidence, that
Vancouver had visited and charted this part
of the coast only a few weeks before, and the