No experience on the coast is more instructive than that of Portlock, and from his report I compile a succinct diary. July 20, 1786, at Graham’s Harbor, Cook’s Inlet, “The Russian chief brought me as a present a quantity of fine salmon, sufficient to serve both ships for one day.” July 21, “In several hauls caught about thirty salmon and a few flat-fish”; also, further, “The Russian settlement had on one side a small lake of fresh water, in which they catch plenty of fine salmon.” July 22, “The boat returned deeply loaded with fine salmon.” July 28, latitude 60° 9´, “Two small canoes came off from the shore; they had nothing to barter except a few dried salmon.” July 30, “Plenty of excellent fresh salmon, which we obtained for beads and buttons.” August 5, “Plenty of fine salmon.” August 9, “The greatest abundance of fine salmon.” August 13, off the entrance of Cook’s Inlet, “Hereabouts would be a most desirable situation for carrying on a whale fishery, the whales being on the coast and close in shore in vast numbers, and there being convenient and excellent harbors quite handy for the business.”[189] Soon after these entries the English navigator left the coast for the Sandwich Islands. Returning during the next year, Portlock continued to record his observations, which I abstract in brief. May 21, 1787, Port Etches, latitude 60° 21´, “The harbor affords very fine crabs and muscles.” June 4, “A few Indians came alongside, bringing some halibut and cod.” June 20, “Plenty of flounders; crabs now very fine; some of the people, in fishing alongside for flounders, caught several cod and halibut.” June 22, “Sent the canoe out some distance into the bay, and it soon returned with a load of fine halibut and cod; this success induced me to send her out frequently with a fishing party, and they caught considerably more than what was sufficient for daily consumption.” June 30, “In hauling the seine, we caught a large quantity of herrings and some salmon; the herrings, though small, were very good, and two hogsheads of them were salted for sea-store.” July 7, “We daily caught large quantities of salmon, but, the unsettled state of the weather not permitting us to cure them on board, I sent the boatswain with a party on shore to build a kind of house to smoke them in.” July 11, “The seine was frequently hauled, and not less than two thousand salmon were caught at each haul; the weather, however, preventing us from curing them so well as could have been wished, we kept only a sufficient quantity for present use, and let the rest escape. The salmon were now in such numbers along the shores that any quantity whatever might be caught with the greatest ease.”[190] All this testimony of the English navigator is singularly explicit, while it is in complete harmony with that of the Russian visitors, and of Cook, who preceded Portlock.