and "the Oregon River" was more frequently on their lips than the Columbia. It is interesting to know that the word was invented by one New Englander and immortalized by another. When Jonathan Carver, doughty captain that he was in the French and Indian wars of the last century, turned explorer, he led an expedition to the head-waters of the Mississippi, that region then being the "Far West" of the continent, and, finding little that he really understood, made some audacious guesses, as was the custom of explorers before him, and drew a map on which he had the Mississippi, Missouri, and "Origan" Rivers to rise from the same or neighboring sources.[1] The name, he said, was given him by the Indians, but a thorough search for any such word in Indian languages leads to the conviction that, like the map, the name was purely imaginary.
The word, however, was one suited to the poet's numbers, and after the discovery of the Columbia, when Bryant wrote his immortal "Thanatopsis," he incorporated the word in his poem, with a slightly different spelling and a nobler sound. The fame of Bryant established the use of the word among educated people, and henceforth the territory of the Oregon" was in the mouths of our national legislators until it became fixed. It is possible that but for the controversy with Great Britain, which kept alive the name under which the great river in dispute was known to her statesmen, ours might have ignored it altogether. Let us be thankful we have both names preserved.
The physical geography of Oregon is unique, and gives a great variety of climates. Approaching from the Pacific, we find, first, a narrow skirting of coast, from one to six miles in width. Back of this rises the Coast Range of mountains, from three to five thousand feet high. Beyond this range are fine, level prairies, extending from forty to sixty miles eastward. Beyond these prairies rises again the Cascade Range, from five to eight thousand feet in height, and having to the east of them
- ↑ Carver knew that navigators familiar with the west coast of the continent expected to find a river from the centre of the continent falling into the Pacific somewhere in this latitude, and had vaguely named it, before seeing it, the "River of the West." He therefore pretended to give the location of its sources, missing it by only about ten hundred and fifty miles.
