24 HERBERT INGRAM PRIESTLY
tioned. Attention may be called also to the fact that Martinez does not speak of any attempt to get an order from Douglas to Funter requiring him to sell the Northwest America to the Spaniard.
The log account of the reception accorded to the Northwest America, Capt. Funter, which put back into Nootka, after a northern cruise for pelts, on June 8th, is as follows: ". . . As soon as it was within a proper distance, I ordered two launches manned, and they towed it inside this port, where it cast anchor at 8 :30 at night. The captain and pilot, Robert Funter and Thomas Bennett, immediately came to greet me. I had them stay to supper, and they returned on board their vessel at 11 at night."
"Tuesday, June 9, 1789, at 7 a. m., I ordered my first pilot, Jose Tovar, the carpenter and the calker and the secretary, to examine that vessel and make an inventory of whatever she contained that was useful and that might be of service. When they had done so, they found that the whole bottom of the ship was rotten and eaten through by shipworms, and that in order to make her serviceable it would be necessary to re- build her almost entirely. In view of the report which they presented to me, I determined to receive whatever she con- tained that was serviceable beside the cargo that she carried. I kept ... of all this ... an inventory, .... made at once, and [have it] in my possession. . . . Every- thing must remain unsettled until we receive the decision . . . of ... the Viceroy, to whom I will render a proper account, to see if this vessel and her contents con- stitute a good prize. [This depends on] whether she is bound by the instructions which the captain of the Portuguese packet Iphigenia presented to me, and whether this ship as well as the other belongs to Don Juan Carvalho . . ." In this we find no pique at inability to buy the vessel, as Meares claimed (Manning, p. 325), which amply justifies his action as a partisan of his king. The accounts of Meares, Douglas,
