battery of San Miguel. The mountains in the interior of the island appear to be composed of thonschiefer, and other primitive rocks. M. Moziño discovered among them seams of copper and sulphuretted lead. He thought he discovered near a lake at about a quarter of a league's distance from the port the effects of volcanic fire in some porous amygdaloid. The climate of Nootka is so mild, that under a more northern latitude than that of Quebec and Paris the smallest streams are not frozen till the month of January. This curious phenomenon confirms the observation of Mackenzie *, who asserts that the north-west coast of the new continent has a much higher temperature than the eastern coasts of America and Asia situated under the same parallels. The inhabitants of Nootka, like those of the northern coast of Norway, are almost strangers to the noise of thunder. Electrical explosions are there exceedingly rare. The hills are covered with pine, oak, cypress, rose bushes, vaccinium, and andromedes. The beauti

* Voyage de Mackenzie, traduit par Castera, vol. III. p.339. It is even believed by the Indians in the vicinity of the northwest coast that the winters are becoming milder yearly. This mildness of climate appears to be produced by the north-west winds, which pass over a considerable extent of sea. M. Mackenzie, as well as myself, believes, that the change of climate observable throughout all North America cannot be attributed to petty local causes, to the destruction of forests for example.

ful shrub which bears the name of Linnéus was only discovered by the gardeners in Vancouver's expedition in higher latitudes. John Mears, and a Spanish officer in particular, Don Pedro Alberoni, succeeded at Nootka in the cultivation of all the European vegetables; but the maize and wheat, however, never yielded ripe grain. A too great luxuriance of vegetation appears to be the cause of this phenomenon. The true humming-bird has been observed in the islands of Quadra and Vancouver. This important fact in the geography of animals must strike those who are ignorant that Mackenzie saw humming-birds at the sources of the River of Peace under the 54° 24′ of north latitude, and that M. Galiano saw them nearly under the same southern parallel in the Straits of Magellan.

Martinez did not carry his researches beyond the 50° of latitude. Two months after his entry into the port of Nootka he saw the arrival of an English vessel, the Argonaut, commanded by James Colnet, known by his observations at the Galapagos islands. Colnet showed the Spanish navigator the orders which he had received from his government to establish a factory at Nootka, to construct a frigate and a cutter, and to prevent every other European nation from interfering with the fur trade *. It was in vain Martinez

* There had been formed in England in 1785 a Nootka

replied, that, long before Cook, Juan Perez had anchored on the same coast. The dispute which arose between the commanders of the Argonaut and the Princessa was on the point of occasioning a rupture between the courts of London and Madrid. Martinez, to establish the priority of his rights, made use of a violent and very illegal measure he arrested Colnet, and sent him by San Blas to the city of Mexico. The true proprietor of the Nootka country, the Tays Macuina, declared himself prudently for the vanquishing party; but the viceroy, who deemed it proper to hasten the recall of Martinez, sent out three other armed vessels in the commencement of the year 1790 to the north-west coast of America.

Don Francisco Elisa and Don Salvador Fidalgo, the brother of the astronomer who surveyed the coast of South America from the mouth of the Dragon to Portobello, commanded this new expedition. M. Fidalgo visited Cook Creek and Prince William's Sound, and he completed the examination of that coast, which was only afterwards examined by the intrepid Vancouver. Under the 60° 54′ of latitude, at the northern extremity of Prince William's Sound,

company, under the name of the King George's Sound Company; and a project was even entertained of forming at Nootka an English colony similar to that of New Holland.

* See my Recueil d'Observations Astronomiques, vol. i.

liv. i.

M. Fidalgo was witness of a phenomenon, proba bly volcanic, of a most extraordinary nature. The Indians conducted him into a plain covered with snow, where he saw great masses of ice and stone thrown up to prodigious heights in the air with a dreadful noise. Don Francisco Elisa remained at Nootka to enlarge and fortify the establishment founded by Martinez in the preceding year. It was not yet known in this part of the world, that by a treaty signed at the Escurial on the 28th October, 1790, Spain had desisted from her pretensions to Nootka and Cox Channel in favour of the court of London. The frigate Dedalus, which brought orders to Vancouver to watch over the execution of this treaty, only arrived at the port of Nootka in the month of August, 1792, at an epoqua when Fi dalgo was employed in forming a second Spanish establishment to the south-east of the island of Quadra on the continent, at the port of Nuñez Gaona, or Quinicamet, situated under the 48° 20′ of latitude, at the creek of Juan de Fuca.

The expedition of Captain Elisa was followed by two others, which for the importance of their atronomical operations, and the excellence of the instruments with which they were provided, may be compared with the expeditions of Cook, La Perouse, and Vancouver. I mean the voyage of the illustrious Malaspina in 1791, and that of Galiano and Valdes in 1792.

The operations of Malaspina and the officers under him embrace an immense extent of coast from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Prince William's Sound. But this able navigator is still more celebrated for his misfortunes than his discoveries. After examining both hemispheres, and escaping all the dangers of the ocean, he had still greater to suffer from his court; and he dragged out six years in a dungeon, the victim of a political intrigue. He obtained his liberty from the French government, and returned to his native country; and he enjoys in solitude on the banks of the Arno the profound impressions which the contemplation of nature and the study of man under so many different climates have left on a mind of great sensibility, tried in the school of adversity.

The labours of Malaspina remain buried in the archives, not because the government dreaded the disclosure of secrets, the concealment of which might be deemed useful, but that the name of this intrepid navigator might be doomed to eternal oblivion. Fortunately, the directors of the Deposito Hydrografico of Madrid * have communicated to the public the principal results of the astronomical observations of Malaspina's expedition. The charts which have appeared at Madrid since 1799 are founded in a great measure on those important results; but instead

* This deposito was established by a royal order on the 6th August, 1797.