JOHN KENDRICK AND His SONS 283
or by owners' instructions. The inference which I draw from the correspondence between the two captains, as well as from that between Gray and Barrell, is that the exchange was intended at the time it was made to be a permanent one.
At any rate after the Columbia departed on 30th July 1789, Kendrick in the Washington began in earnest the work of trading on the coast. The details of his move- ments may be pieced together from Hoskins' Journal, Martinez's Diary, a letter of his own, and one from John Meares. Before these were known this period was se- lected for his alleged circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, as reported by Meares. Dr. C. F. Newcombe has demonstrated that this circumnavigating voyage is a myth : 13 just another of Meares' fictions. The mere facts that Kendrick was at Clayoquot Sound on 30th July 1789 equipped with only sufficient provisions to last for a two months' cruise, and reached China on 27th January 1790, by way of the Hawaiian Islands, with a cargo of more than five hundred skins are, for anyone acquainted with local geography, sufficient to dispose of the question. The facts bearing on his movements at this time may however be summarized. In a letter to Joseph Barrell dated 13th July 1789, Kendrick states his intention of cruising "to the Northd. part of the coast." 14 Hoskins tells us that Kendrick went "on a cruise to the north- ward" and that "after cruising round Washington Isl- and" (Queen Charlotte Islands) he proceeded to China. Martinez's Diary records that the Washington at this time met Metcalf's Eleanora and later reported the fact to the Fair American on encountering her in Dixon En- trance. Meares, who is the father of the circumnavigat- ing story, in an undated memorandum gives a farrago which fits in part with these statements. He says : "That
13 The First Circumnavigation of Vancouver Island, by C. F. New- combe, Victoria, 1914.
14 The Barrell Letters in Washington Historical Quarterly, Vol. XII, pp. 252-3.
