Note 91 — Chapter V · [1]

Vancouver Island was long supposed to be a portion of the mainland. Its insularity was not proved until 1792, when both Vancouver and the Spanish ships circumnavigated it. At the request of the Spanish envoy, it received the name Quadra and Vancouver Island (see Vancouver, Voyage, ii, p. 357); but the length of the appellation has caused the first part to be dropped. See our volume xxviii, p. 33, note 10.

Queen Charlotte Islands (now proved to be two) were first visited by the Spaniards in 1774. Dixon, an English navigator, named the group in 1787, giving his own name to the channel north of the island. The Americans, in ignorance of Dixon’s prior discovery, named the island for Washington (1789); see our volume xxviii, p. 38, note 16.—Ed.