Free ebooks ==> http://www.Ebook777.com
La Pérouse retraced Cook’s route—in the
reverse direction—with the help of copies of
the English explorer’s charts. At aspot now
known as Lituya Bay, La Pérouse landed,
claimed the land for France, and named it Port
des Français. The French explorers traded
with the Native inhabitants for sea otter pelts.
As they prepared to continue eastward on, a
sounding party in two boats was capsized at
the rough waters’ edge, with a loss of 21 men.
The disaster cast a pall over the progress of the
expedition down the foggy, dangerous coast of
North America. Nevertheless, the expedition
continued its charting workuntil it reached
the recently founded Spanish mission at Mon-
terey on September 13. La Pérouse, whose
men were resupplied by friendly Spanish set-
tlers, recorded some of the first observations
of the mission and Indians living there:With pain we say it, the resemblance [to
slavery] is so perfect that we have seen men
and women in irons or in the stocks; and
even the sounds of the lash might have
struck our ears, that punishment also being
admitted, though practiced with little
severity. I confess that, friend of the rights of
man rather than theologian, I should have
desired that to principles of Christianity
there might have been joined a legislation
that little by little would have made citizens
of men whose condition hardly differs now
from that of the negroes of our most
humanely governed colonies.La Pérouse next set out for Macao, China,
to sell the sea otter pelts obtained in Alaska.
He spent all of 1777 exploring the Pacific
Ocean. In January 1788, after leaving Botany
Bay, Australia, La Pérouse disappeared at sea.
Heis thought to havebeen shipwrecked at
New Hebrides. Some of the scientific informa-
tion La Pérouse collected survived in journals
he sent to France from Australia aboard a
British ship. France did not, however, pursue
any territorial claims in the Pacific Northwest
on the basis of his voyage.CONFRONTATION AT
NOOTKA
European exploration and territorial ambi-
tions in the Pacific Northwest increasingly
centered on a 12,408-square-mile island
inhabited by the Nootka, Kwakiutl, Coast Sal-
ish, and other Native American tribes. The
land would soon be named Vancouver Island.
Occasional European voyages into Pacific
Northwest waters produced seal otter furs,Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, led
an expedition consisting of two ships and many
scientists on an extensive journey through the
Pacific Ocean that began in 1785 and disappeared
in 1788. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division [LC-USZ62-78225])(^162) B Discovery of the Americas, 1492–1800
http://www.Ebook777.com