236 WHO DISCOVERED THE COLUMBIA ? [1792. 



miles above its mouth. At this spot he remained three days, en- 

 gaged in trading and filling his casks with water, and then sailed 

 up the river about twelve or fifteen miles along its northern shore ; 

 where, finding that he could proceed no farther, from having ". taken 

 the wrong channel," he again came to anchor. During the week 

 which followed, he made several attempts to quit the river, but 

 was constantly baffled, until, at length, on the 20th, he crossed the 

 bar at the mouth, by beating over it with a westerly wind, and 

 regained the Pacific* 



On leaving the river, Gray gave to it the name of his ship — the 

 Columbia — which it still bears ; though attempts are made to fix 

 upon it that of Oregon, on the strength of the accounts which 

 Carver pretended to have collected, in 1766, among the Indians of 

 the Upper Mississippi, respecting a River Oregon, rising near Lake 

 Superior, and emptying into the Strait of Anian.^ The extremity 

 of the sand-bank, projecting into the sea on the south side of its en- 

 trance, was called by Gray Point Adams ; and he assigned the name 

 of Cape Hancock to the opposite promontory, on the north side, be- 

 ing ignorant that Meares had already called it Cape Disappointment, 

 in token of the unsuccessful result of his search for the river. 



The principal circumstances relating to the discovery of this 

 river, the greatest which enters the Pacific from America, have 

 now been fairly presented. It has been shown — that the opening 

 through which its waters are discharged into the ocean was first 

 seen in August, 1776, by the Spanish navigator Heceta,J and was 

 distinguished on Spanish charts, within the thirteen years next 

 following, as the mouth of the River San Roque — that it was 

 examined in July, 1788, by Meares,^ who quitted it with the con- 

 viction that no river existed there — and that this opinion of 

 Meares was subscribed, without qualification, by Vancouver, after he 

 had minutely examined that coast, " under the most favorable con- 

 ditions of wind and weather," and notwithstanding the assurances 

 of Gray to the contrary. Had Gray, after parting with the English 

 ships, not returned to the river, and ascended it as he did, there is 

 every reason to believe that it would have long remained unknown ; 

 for the assertions of Vancouver that no opening, harbor, or place of 

 refuge for vessels, was to be found between Cape Mendocino and the 



* See the extract from the log-book of the Columbia, containing the account of 

 the entrance of Gray into the river, among the Proofs and Illustrations, in the latter 

 part of this volume, under the letter E, No. 2. 



t See p. 142. t See p. 120. § See p. 177. 



