6

is seldom covered in less than seven hours without packs; and
packers carrying only 40 to 50 pounds require two days for the
trip. These obstacles make surveying or prospecting slow and
costly.

HiSTORY.!

The Queen Charlotte islands, named by Dixon in 1781, were
visited by several Spanish expeditions at earlier dates. It is
possible that they were visited as early as 1639 by the Spaniard
Bartholomew De Fonte, who commanded an expedition fitted
out at Callao, Peru. The first well authenticated visit seems
to have been that of Ensign Juan Perez, who reached the islands
on July 18,1774. After Perez, the group was visited by Bodega
and Maurelle in 1775; La Perouse, Lowrie and Guise, Hanna, and
Portlock and Dixon in 1786; Dixon, and Colnett and Duncan in
1787; Duncan, and Douglas in 1788; Gray, and Funter in 1789;
Ingraham, and Marchand in 1791; Jacinto Caamano, Haswell,
Gray, and Vancouver in 1792; and Vancouver in 1793. Various
fur-traders continued to visit the islands, but on the decline of
the fur trade, attention was (to quote Dawson)

“withdrawn from the islands until 1852, when the Hudson Bay Company
dispatched a party of men in the Brig Una, Captain Mitchell, to discover the
locality from which several specimens of gold had been brought by Indians.
This was found to be in Port Kuper or Gold Harbour, on the west coast.
The gold was found in a small irregular vein, which was soon proved to run
out in every direction. . . . . . The enterprise was soon abandoned, but
the discovery for a time created quite a furore—the first gold excitement of
British Columbia—and the locality was visited by a number of miners, but
with no better success... ... Mr. Downie (in 1859) appears to have been
the first to discover the coal at Skidegate inlet. About this time a Captain
Torrens also went with a party to prospect on the Queen Charlotte islands,
and narrowly escaped massacre by the Skidegate Indians.”’

Various surveys of inlets and harbours were made by
officers of the Royal Navy, from 1852 to 1886, when D. Pender,
R. N., made a careful chart of a large portion of Skidegate
inlet.

1 For a more detailed account of the early voyages of discovery to the Queen Charlotte
islands, see Dawson, G. M., Geol. Surv., Can., Rept. of Prog., 1878-79, pp. 2B-14B,
from which this account is taken.