Note 3 — Part I

5. I find another and greater objection to the abandonment of these islands; that is, that the English would securely establish themselves therein, for they have shown themselves eager and greedy for the advantages which the islands present. In that case, they would easily carry on, by way of the Southern Sea, an illicit commerce with Nueva España—where they could land wherever they might please, and without difficulty make themselves masters of the Californias, in order to continue, with this advantage, the discoveries by which they have sought to find a passage to the Eastern Indias by the [route] northwest from Hudson’s Bay (called thus from the name of an English captain). With this object there was formed, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, a company of English merchants, who, as a result of their latest enterprises (in the years 1746 and 1747),3 have reasonable expectations of finding a way of communication between the Northern and the Southern Seas, according to the critical account of a modern geographer.