ing on with the Chinese for
the sea-otter skins, which had every day been rising in their value. One of
our seamen sold his stock alone for eight hundred dollars; and a few prime
skins, which were clean, and had been well preserved, were sold for one
hundred and twenty each. The whole amount of the value, in specie and
goods, that was got for the furs, in both ships, I am confident, did not
fall short of two thousand pounds sterling; and it was generally supposed,
that at least two-thirds of the quantity we had originally got from the
Americans, were spoiled and worn out, or had been given away, and otherwise
disposed of in Kamtschatka. When, in addition to these facts, it is
remembered, that the furs were at first collected without our having any
idea of their real value; that the greatest part had been worn by the
Indians, from whom we purchased them; that they were afterward preserved
with little care, and frequently used for bed-clothes, and other purposes,
during our cruise to the north; and that, probably, we had never got the
full-value for them in China; the advantages that might be derived from a
voyage to that part of the American coast, undertaken with commercial
views, appear to me of a degree of importance sufficient to call for the
attention of the public.

The rage with which our seamen were possessed to return to Cook's river,
and by another cargo of skins to make their fortunes, at one time was not
far short of mutiny; and I must own, I could not help indulging myself in a
project, which the disappointment we had suffered, in being obliged to
leave the Japanese archipelago, and the northern coast of China,
unexplored, first suggested; and, by what I conceived, that object might
still be happily accomplished, through means of the East India Company, not
only without expence, but even with the prospect of very considerable
advantages. Though the situation of affairs at home, or perhaps greater
difficulties in the execution of my scheme than I had foreseen, have
hitherto prevented its being carried into effect, yet, as I find the plan
in my journal, and still retain my partiality for it, I hope it will not be
entirely foreign to the nature of this work, if I beg leave to insert it
here.

I proposed then, that the company's China ships should carry an additional
complement of men each, making in all one hundred. Two vessels, one of two
hundred, and the other of one hundred and fifty tons, might, I was told,