248 UNWORTHY CONDUCT OF VANCOUVER. [1792. 



quitted the Columbia, in company with the Jenny, and arrived at 

 Port San Francisco before the end of the month. 



The distinction which Vancouver and Broughton have thus en- 

 deavored to establish between the upper and the lower portions of 

 the Columbia, is entirely destitute of foundation, and at variance 

 with the principles of our whole geographical nomenclature. Inlets 

 and sounds are arms of the sea, running up into the land ; and their 

 waters, being supplied from the sea, are necessarily salt : the ivaters 

 of the Columbia are, on the contrary, generally fresh and potable 

 within ten miles of the Pacific ; the volume and the overbearing 

 force of the current being sufficient to prevent the farther ingress 

 of the ocean. The question appears, at first, to be of no conse- 

 quence : the following extract from Vancouver's journal will, how- 

 ever, serve to show that the quibble was devised by the British 

 navigators, with the unworthy object of depriving Gray of the 

 merits of his discovery : " Previously to his [Broughton's] depart- 

 ure, he formally took possession of the river, and the country in its 

 vicinity, in his Britannic majesty's name, having every reason to 

 believe that the subjects of no other civilized nation or state had ever 

 entered this river before. In this opinion he was confirmed by Mr. 

 Gray's sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. Gray either saw 

 or ever was within five leagues of its entrance." This unjust view 

 has been adopted by the British government and writers, and also, 

 doubtless from inadvertency, by some distinguished authors in the 

 United States. It may be, indeed, considered fortunate for Gray, 

 that, by communicating the particulars of his discoveries, as he did, 

 to Quadra, he secured an unimpeachable witness in support of his 

 claims ; had he not done so, the world would probably never have 

 learned that a citizen of the United States was the first to enter the 

 greatest river flowing from America into the Pacific, and to find the 

 only safe harbor on the long line of coast between Port San Fran- 

 cisco and the Strait of Fuca. 



At San Francisco and Monterey, Vancouver surveyed the bays, 

 and examined the Spanish establishments, of which he presents 

 minute and graphic descriptions in his narrative ; and he obtained 

 satisfactory evidence that the presidio of San Francisco, situated 

 near the entrance of the bay, in latitude of 37 degrees 48 minutes, 

 ivas the northernmost spot, on the Pacific coast of America, occupied 

 by the Spaniards previous to the month of May, 1789, and was, con- 

 sequently, according to the convention of 1790, the northernmost 

 spot on that coast over which Spain could exercise exclusive juris- 



