The expedition reached the shores of New Albion in 44° north, and thence coasted at some distance off up to 48°. Cook arrived at the same conclusion which Heceta had adopted, that between 47° and 48° north there were no Straits of Fuca, as alleged. He seems to have passed unobserved the arm of the sea a little further northward, having most probably struck across to the coast of Vancouver's Island, which trends north-westward. Having now reached the parallel of 49° 30', he cast anchor in a spacious bay, to which he gave the name of King George's Sound; but the name of Nootka, borrowed from the natives, has since prevailed. It has been supposed, as already stated, that Nootka Sound was the bay in which Perez cast anchor, and which he named Port San Lorenzo; and that the implements of European manufacture, which Captain Cook, to his great surprise, found in the possession of one of the natives, were obtained on that occasion from the Spaniards. The first notification, however, of the existence of this important harbour, dates from this visit of Captain Cook, who continued his voyage northward up to the 59th parallel, and from that point commenced his survey of the coast, in the hope of discovering a passage into the Atlantic. It is unnecessary to trace his course onward. Although Spanish navigators claim to have seen portions of the coast of North America between the limits of 43° and 55° prior to his visit, yet their discoveries had not been made public, and their observations had been too cursory and vague to lead to any practical result. Captain Cook is entitled, beyond dispute, to the credit of having first dispelled the popular errors respecting the extent of the continents of America and Asia, and their respective proximity: and as Drake, according to Fletcher, changed the name of the land south of Magellan's Straits from Terra Incognita to Terra nunc bene Cognita, so Cook was assuredly entitled to change the name of the North Pacific Sea from "Mare Incognitum" to "Mare nunc bene Cognitum."
On the return of the vessels engaged in this expedition to England, where they arrived in October, 1780, it was thought expedient by the Board of Admiralty to delay the publication of an authorised account, as Great Britain was engaged in hostilities with the United States in America, and with France and Spain in the Old World. The Russians in the mean time hastened to avail themselves of the information which they had obtained when Captain King, on his way homewards by China, touched at the harbor of Petropawlosk, and an association was speedily formed amongst the fur merchants of Siberia and Kamtchatka to open a trade with the shores of the American continent. An expedition was in consequence dispatched in 1783, for the double purpose of trading and exploring, and several trading posts were established between Aliaska and Prince William's Sound. Mr. Greenhow (p. 161) assigns to this period the Russian establishment on the island of Kodiak, near the entrance of the bay called Cook's Bay, but the Russian authorities refer this settlement to a period as remote as 1763. (Letter from the Chevalier de Poletica to the Secretary of State at Washington, 28th February, 1822. British and Foreign State Papers, 1821-22, p. 484.) The Russian establishments seem to have extended themselves in 1787, and the following year as far as Admiralty Bay, at the foot of Mount Elias. The publication, however, of the journals of Cook's expedition, which took place in 1784-5, soon introduced a host of rival traders into these seas. Private expeditions were dispatched from Macao, under the Portuguese flag, in 1785 and 1786, and under the flag of the East India Company in 1786. In the month of June of this latter year, La Perouse, in command of a French expedition of discovery, arrived off the coast, and cast anchor in a bay near the foot of Mount Fairweather, in about 59°, which he named Port des Français. He thence skirted the coast southward past Port Bucareli, the western shores of Queen Charlotte's Island, and Nootka, and reached Monterey in September, where having stayed sixteen days, he bade adieu to the north-west coast of America. La Perouse seems first to have suspected the separation of Queen Charlotte's Island from the continent, but as no account of the results of this expedition was published before 1797, other navigators forestalled him in the description of nearly all the places which he had visited.