La Perouse coasted along their shores in 1786, and first determined their entire separation from the mainland. In 1787, Captain Dixon sailed off and on their north-west shores, with his vessel, the Queen Charlotte, naming the group, also North Island, Cloak Bay, Parry Passage, Hippa Island, Rennell Sound, Cape St. James, and Ibbitson's Sound, now known as Houston Stewart Channel. The first white men known to have landed upon the islands, were a portion of the crew of the _Iphigenia_, under command of Captain William Douglass, who remained about a week in Parry Passage in 1788, trading with the natives. The most extensive explorations made of any portion of the islands, by those early navigators, whose voyages for purposes of discovery, trade and adventure, extended into these northern seas, were those of Captain Etienne Marchand in the French ship _Solide_, who in 1791, examined the shores bordering on Parry Passage, and also about twenty miles of the west coast of Graham Island, from near Frederick Island southward. Since that date, although several parties of prospectors and others have visited various parts of the islands, no systematic effort has hitherto been made for the exploration of the entire group. Under the direction of the Dominion Government, the waters and shores of the north and east coast of the islands including those of Massett Inlet and Sound, Naden Harbor and Skidegate Inlet, have been partially examined, and mapped with considerable accuracy; but almost the entire west coast, so far as the number, extent and character of its numerous indentations are concerned, has hitherto remained a _terra incognita_. Judge James G. Swan, who, under the direction of the U. S. Government, visited the islands in 1883, and voyaged in a canoe from Massett to Skidegate, gave in a lecture before the Provincial Legislature of British Columbia, the first public confirmation of the entrances to the inlets and harbors on the west coast of Graham Island, approximately, as reported by Captain Marchand. * * * * * General Physical Features