I have in my possession a manuscript of about six hundred pages, entitled
"Lavall's Tour across the American Continent, from the North Pacific to the
Atlantic Ocean, in a more southern Latitude than any yet attempted:
performed in the Years 1809 and 1810." A map of the route accompanies it.
The accounts of the country, and of the Indian tribes, correspond with what
we learn from other sources; and gentlemen of information in Indian affairs
believe the work to be the genuine production of a person who has been over
the ground described.
According to this work, Lavall was a native of Philadelphia, and born in
1774. His father, who was a royalist, settled in Upper Canada, and engaged
in the fur trade. In 1809 Baptist Vincent Lavall visited England to receive
a legacy left him by a relation. Here he was persuaded to join a vessel
fitting out for the purpose of trading in the North Pacific. It was a
schooner of about two hundred tons, called the Sea Otter, commanded by
Captain Niles. This vessel was lost upon the coast of Oregon, on the 15th
of August, 1809, whilst Lavall and three of the crew were on shore hunting.
They made their way across the continent to New Orleans.
Can any information be furnished from any custom-house in England as to the
Sea Otter, Captain Niles?