The Pacific Slope and Alaska

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 Excerpt: ...of the governor of California. For nearly three years the Otter had no successor; then, in 1799, the ship Eliza entered San Francisco Bay, trading for supplies, and the following year Captain Charles Winship, of Boston, landed on the southern coast with the Betsy. In the opening years of the new century the European peoples were increasingly engrossed with the wars at home, so that the west coast of North America tended to become the exclusive trading ground of American sailors, whose ships the Spaniards frequently saw passing northward and southward. Orders were issued from Mexico to the California authorities in 1801 to be on guard against them. Yet one of them, the Enterprise, from New York, traded for supplies at San Diego in June of that year. Two years later the Lelia Byrd, Captain William Shaler, from Salem, Massachusetts, brought out a large amount of merchandise for the purpose of illicit trade. At San Diego, Shaler found the commandant too watchful to permit it, and so, after an adventure in which the Lelia Byrd exchanged shots with the fort battery, this vessel escaped southward for repairs. The object of Shaler, as of Brown, Rowan, and other American shipowners of this time, was to exchange their goods for otter skins. In time they succeeded, the Spaniards looking to the manifest advantage to the colony in permitting trade, rather than to the restrictive orders from Mexico, which could always be evaded. The missionaries, also, appear to have profited by the commercial opportunities thus presented, they, too, having furs to sell, which they secured by means of the neophytes. Captain Shaler, who in 1808 published an account of California, declared that for several years American traders had purchased furs in California, in spite of the government ...