THE ROBINSON CRUSOE OF VANCOUVER.

About the year 1802 the ship Boston, from Boston, Mass., went to Hull, England, to secure a cargo of goods to carry to the Indians on the Northwest coast of America to trade for furs.  She was a general trading-vessel, such as roamed the seas of the world adventurously at that time, and often made fortunes for the merchants of New York, Boston, and other Atlantic port cities.

She was commanded by Captain John Salter, a clever man and a natural story-teller, whose engaging pictures of travel were sure to fascinate the young.

While in England this man met a lad by the name of John Rogers Jewett, who listened eagerly to his romantic adventures, and who desired to embark with him for America, and was allowed by his parents to make the voyage.  The ship sailed around Cape Horn to Nootka Island, one of the islands on the west coast of Vancouver Island between the forty-ninth and fiftieth parallel.  Here the whole crew, with the exception of young Jewett and a man by the name of Thompson, were massacred by the Indians, and the strange and tragic narrative of the survivors was an American and English wonder-tale seventy years ago.  Mr. Jewett published the account of his capture and sufferings, under the title of “John R. Jewett and Thompson,” or, to copy the title of the quaint old book before me, “A Narrative of the Adventures and Sufferings of John R. Jewett, only Survivor of the Crew of the Ship Boston, during a Captivity of nearly Three Years among the Savages of Nootka Sound.”  The book was issued from London, England, and from Middletown, Conn.  After Robinson Crusoe, perhaps no book was more eagerly read by our grandfathers in their boyhood than this.

The Indian king of Nootka was Maquina.  He used to visit the ship, sometimes wearing a wooden mask over his face representing some wild beast.  Such masks are still to be found among the Indians of Vancouver.

Maquina was at first very friendly to Captain Salter, but one day the latter offended him, and he resolved to have his revenge by killing him and the crew, and destroying the ship.  Accordingly, one morning, after he had been capering on deck and blowing a rude whistle, he said to the captain: 

“When do you intend to sail?”

“To-morrow,” replied the captain.

“You love salmon—­much in Friendly Cove; go, then, and catch some,” said the chief.

The captain thought it very desirable to have a large supply of fish on board, so he assented to the chief’s proposal, and, after dinner with the latter, he sent away a jolly-boat or yawl with nine men to fish in Friendly Cove.