consequence of which, Louis declined entering as a party into 1770. the dispute, though he at the same time tendered his good offices as a mediator between the two Powers. To this offer the Spanish Government acceded; and the King of France was thereupon immediately requested to take the whole matter under his charge, and to make any arrangement which he might consider proper for the interests and honor of Spain. In the mean time, a change had occurred in the composition and views of the British ministry. Lord Weymouth, being unwilling to recede from his first demands, and finding his colleagues averse to a war with Spain, had retired from office, and his successor, Lord Rochford, Dec. 18. was ready to compromise the affair. The offer of mediation on the part of France was, therefore, accepted by the Court of London; and a definitive arrangement of the dispute was effected on the day of the meeting of Parliament.

On that day the Spanish ambassador at London, Prince Masserano, presented to Lord Rochford a Declaration, in the name of the King of Spain, to the effect that his Catholic Majesty, being desirous to maintain peace with Great Britain, disavowed the acts of violence committed by the Governor of Buenos Ayres, and engaged to restore to his Britannic Majesty and his subjects "the port and fort of Egmont in the Falkland Islands, with all the artillery, stores, and effects, precisely as they were before the 10th of June, 1770;" but at the same time it was declared that this disavowal and engagement "cannot nor ought in anywise to affect the question of prior right of sovereignty of the Falkland Islands." The Earl of Rochford, in return, presented an Acceptance, in which, after recapitulating the paragraph of the Declaration relating to the disavowal and engagements to make restitution, he stated that "his Britannic Majesty would look upon the said declaration, together with the performance of said engagement, as a satisfaction for the injury done to the Crown of Great Britain;” he, however, made no allusion whatever to the reservation respecting the right of sovereignty to the territory restored.

1771.

Jan. 22.

In execution of this engagement, the British colonists were replaced at Port Egmont, as soon as it had been restored to the condition in which it was before the seizure; they were, however, withdrawn in 1774, by order of their own Government, and the 1774. Falkland Islands having thus been freed from the presence of all other Europeans, were occupied by the Spaniards, who retained them until South America became independent. This abandon

*The celebrated treaty between the Monarchs of France and Spain, called the Pacte de Famille, was signed at Paris on the 15th of August, 1761. By the first article, their Majesties declare that "the two Crowns will henceforth consider every Power as their common enemy, which shall become the enemy of either of them;" by the second article, they "reciprocally guaranty, in the most absolute and authentic manner, all the estates, lands, islands, and places which they possess in any part of the world." Other articles fix the amount of "the first succors which the Power requested shall be obliged to furnish to the Power requesting." This treaty was virtually annulled by the National Assembly of France, in August, 1790; having been almost a dead letter during the whole period in which it was supposed to heve been in force.

ment by Great Britain of a territory which had formed the subject of such serious difficulties between her Government and that of Spain, was justified by the British ministry on the ground that no advantages were derived or expected from the colony sufficient to compensate the costs of maintaining it. The Spaniards, however, have always asserted, and their assertion is supported by the opinions of distinguished British historians and statesmen, that the evacuation of the islands took place in execution of an express though secret engagement to that effect, entered into by Lord Rochford at the time of the arrangement of the dispute.*

The Spanish Government considered the result of this dispute as advantageous, upon the whole, to the security of its American possessions; regarding the concessions made by itself as more than compensated by the indirect admission of its assumed rights of sovereignty over the unsettled territories adjoining those dominions. Indeed, those concessions were little else than diplomatic courtesies. The spot occupied by the British colonists was restored only to be soon after abandoned; and Bucareli, notwithstanding the censure cast upon him in the disavowal of his conduct, was continued in command at Buenos Ayres until that evacuation took place, after which he was raised to the lucrative and dignified station of Viceroy of Mexico.

The same opinions with regard to the concessions of the Spanish King prevailed very generally in Great Britain, as soon as they were made known. The arrangement was severely criticised, and the ministry were reprehended+ for concluding it, both in and out of Parliament; and the consciousness that these opinions were just, rendered the British Government more severe and uncompromising in its exactions from Spain upon the occasion of the dispute respecting Nootka Sound in 1790. The similarity of the circumstances which led to these two disputes, and the identity of the principles maintained by each party at both periods, rendered it proper to introduce the foregoing accounts and observations respecting the difficulties between Spain and Great

* Governor Pownal, in the debate in Parliament, March 5th, 1771, (see Parliamentary History, vol. xvi, page 1394,) on his motion for censuring the ministry on account of the arrangement with Spain, says: "Without some such idea as this, namely, that as soon as reparation is made to our honor for the violent and hostile manner in which we were driven off the island, and as soon as we are put in a situation to evacuate it on our own motion, it is tacitly understood we are to cede it-without some such idea as this, the whole of the negotiation is inexplicable and unintelligible." To this no reply was made on the part of the ministry.

+ In the debate in the House of Peers upon the address approving the arrangement with Spain, Lord Chatham used this language: "There never was a more odious or more infamous falsehood imposed upon a great nation. It degrades the King; it insults the Parliament. His Majesty has been advised to affirm an absolute falsehood. My Lords, I beg your attention; and I hope to be understood when I repeat that it is an absolute falsehood. The King of Spain disowns the thief, while he leaves him unpunished and profits by his theft." In the protest against the arrangement entered into in the House of Lords by Lords Chatham, Lansdowne, and other eminent members, it is averred that in the declaration and acceptance "no claim on the part of his Majesty to the right of sovereignty to any part of the island ceded to him has been advanced; and any assertion whatsoever of his Majesty's right of sovereignty has been studiously avoided from the beginning to the end," &c. See Junius's letter of January 30, 1771; and Johnson's Defence of the Ministry, which is generally supposed to have been dictated by Lord North.

Britain in 1770; otherwise they would have been out of place in 1774. this memoir.

to

1779

The issue of this dispute served to impress the Spanish Gov- 1771 ernment still more strongly with the conviction of the necessity of occupying the vacant coasts adjoining its American provinces, either effectively, or in such a manner as to afford at least the semblance of right to the exclusive possession of them. Efforts with this view were accordingly made on the shores of Texas, Mosquito, Patagonia, and California; and were continued at a great expense, though with little success, until 1779, when the war between Spain and Great Britain occasioned their suspension. The settlements of the Spaniards on the west coast of California were, and continued to be until within a few years past, little more than missionary stations under the direction of Franciscan friars; some of them were, however, styled Presidios, in virtue of their possessing mud forts garrisoned by a few miserable soldiers. The most northern of these establishments was that on the Bay of San Francisco, founded in 1776; the residence of the Governor was, and still is, at Monterey.

The British Government, on its part, although abandoning the Falkland Islands, still persevered in endeavoring to have the Pacific minutely explored. For this purpose, Captain Cook was despatched on his second voyage around the world, from which he returned in 1775; having in the mean time made many important discoveries, and completely disproved the rumors, based upon the declarations of the Spanish navigator Quiros in 1607, respecting the existence of a habitable continent south of the Pacific and Indian Oceans.

In 1774 and 1775 the northwest coast of America was explored by Spanish navigators between the 43d degree of latitude, the limit of preceding discoveries from the south, and the 58th; and in 1778 and 1779 the remaining portions, as far north as the Arctic Sea, were examined by the British, under Cook and his successors in command. Before relating these important occurrences, it will be convenient to present a view of the discoveries which had been made by the Russians in the northernmost parts of the Pacific, as the objects and movements of the other two nations, with regard to this section of the world, will thereby be rendered more easily intelligible.

*For statistical accounts of these establishments, as they existed at the beginning of the present century, see Humboldt's Essay on New Spain.

17720

1774

to

1779.

1696.

CHAPTER III.

Voyages of discovery and trade in the northernmost parts of the Pacific made by the Russians from Kamschatka and Ochotsk, between 1728 and 1779-Voyages of Beering and Tschiriko-Establishment of the fur trade between Asiatic Russia and the opposite coasts and islands of America-Voyages of Synd, Krenitzin, Levasheff, and Benyowsky.

BEFORE the beginning of the eighteenth century, the coasts of Asia bordering upon the Pacific, north of the 40th degree of latitude, were as little known as those of America beyond the same parallel. At that time, the only information respecting the former territories was derived from the reports of Martin Geritzen de Vries, a Dutch navigator, who had in 1643 explored the seas north of Japan as far as the 48th degree, and had doubtless entered the gulf bounded by the Kurile Islands and Kamschatka on the east, which is now called the Sea of Ochotsk. In the best maps,* published as lately as 1720, Jesso, the most northern of the Japanese islands, is represented as part of the continent of Asia; while the Kurile group are laid down as a continuous territory, under the name of the Company's land, separated from Jesso by a passage called the Strait of Vries.

Such was the state of geographical knowledge with regard to the northeastern coasts of Asia in 1696, when the Cossacks, who had been sent by Peter the Great, Czar of Russia, to explore and conquer the northern parts of that continent, discovered Kamschatka, and penetrated to the shores of the Pacific. Within the ensuing fifteen years, Kamschatka and the whole region intervening between it and Europe were definitively attached to the Russian empire.

From these conquests the Russians acquired, among other advantages, an extension of their commercial intercourse with China, which thus in a short time became very important. The principal articles of export to that country were the skins and furst of animals, which were obtained either in Siberia and Kamschatka, or by way of England from Hudson's Bay; in return, the Russians brought from China its teas, silks, porcelain, and other precious commodities. This commercial intercourse was effected by means of caravans passing over land to and from certain points

* See historical and geographical atlas of Mitchell and Senex, published at London in 1620.

+ Furs have been at all periods highly prized in China as objects of comfort and luxury. In the northern provinces they are used as defences against cold; while throughout the empire they constitute an important part of the dress of every rich noble or ostentatious person. "With the least change of air," says Krusenstern, "the Chinese immediately alter their dress; and even at Canton, which is under the tropic, they wear furs in the winter."

in each empire; and when we consider the immense distance, 1696. and the difficulties of the journey between the commercial cities of European Russia and those of China, it becomes evident that none but objects of great value, in comparison to their bulk, could have been thus transported with profit to those engaged.

The possession of these vast regions only served to inspire the 1711. ambitious Czar with designs for the extension of his authority over other portions of the earth. Finding his dominions limited by the ocean in the east, he was anxious to know what territories lay beyond that barrier, and whether it would not be possible for him to invade from that quarter the establishments of the French, the British, or the Spaniards in America. Influenced by such views, he ordered that vessels should be built in Kamschatka, and equipped for voyages of discovery to be made agreeably to instructions which he himself drew up; while, in the mean time, other vessels should proceed from Archangel eastward, to explore the Arctic or Icy Sea and the northern coasts of Asia.

At the period when this plan was arranged by Peter the Great, it was not known whether Asia and America were united by land in the north, or were separated by means of a connexion between the Pacific and the Icy Sea; nor had it indeed been ascertained that the waters which bathed the shores of Kamschatka communicated directly with the Pacific, although this was considered most probable from the traditions that large ships had been wrecked upon those shores. The solution of these great geographical questions was the first object proposed by the Czar in the expeditions; the next being to discover the most practicable means of reaching the possessions of other European nations in America.

1725.

Various circumstances prevented the execution of any of these projects during the lifetime of Peter. His widow and successor, Catherine, however, resolved to carry them into fulfilment; and a small vessel was at length, in 1728, built and equipped at the 1728. mouth of the river of Kamschatka, on the eastern side of that peninsula, for a voyage agreeably to the instructions of the Czar. The command of the expedition was intrusted to Vitus Beering, a Dane, who had been selected for the purpose by Peter on account of his approved courage and nautical skill; his lieutenants were Alexei Tschirikof, a Russian, and Martin Spanberg, a German, both of whom afterwards rose to eminence as navigators. Beering sailed from Kamschatka on the 14th of July, 1728, July 14. and took a northward course along the Asiatic shore, which he traced as far as the latitude of 67 degrees 18 minutes. There he found the coast turning almost directly eastward, and presenting August 15. nothing but rocks and snow as far as it could be perceived, while no land was visible in the north or the east. From these circumstances, the navigator concluded that he had reached the northeastern extremity of Asia, and that the waters in which he was then sailing were those of the Icy Sea. Conceiving, therefore, that he had attained the objects of his voyage in this direction, and fearing that if he should proceed farther he might be obliged to winter in this desolate region, for which he was unprepared,