16 F. G. YOUNG
others during the preceding three centuries. Parliament had just offered a prize of 20,000 for the discovery of it.
While Francis Drake had been off our Oregon Coast just two centuries before Cook's appearance his lead was not followed up by his countrymen as Cook's was destined to be to the discomfiture of Spanish operations on our Western shores. On Cook's cruise northward, at intervals along shore, he named capes Perpetua, Foulweather, and Flattery on the Oregon and Washington Coasts. He entered Nootka Sound anchoring in what he called Friendly Cove. He there repaired his vessels and "obtained full supplies of water, wood, fish grass and spruce beer." He happened also to purchase a supply of beaver skins from the natives, "holding no thoughts at that time of using them to any other advantage than converting them to purposes of clothing." He found a market for them in China at the rate of $100 for what cost him 6 pence sterling. Intelligence of the opportunity for profit demonstrated in that transaction was passed along, reaching first the English mer- chants operating in China and India, but arriving in due time at the centers of foreign trade of England and America. John Ledyard, an American, who had been a sailor with Cook's expedition was particularly active in canvassing the matter and was probably largely instrumental in getting the company of Boston merchants to dispatch so promptly the Columbia and Washington under Kendrick and Gray.
This economic lure of prodigious profit in fur trade with the natives on the Northwest Coast soon made Nootka Sound, with its inviting conditions for shelter and refreshments, a great rendezvous.
In 1785 came the first ship to trade for furs, an English vessel from China. The next year six additional English vessels arrived, two from Bengal, two from Bombay, and two direct from England. During the summers immediately fol- lowing, this volume of trafficking along the coast was main- tained. The individual participants would change. As a cargo
