of a well furnished expedition, as Vancouver was. But he said to himself: There is the mouth of the much talked-of, long-sought river; and he entered his impressions on his log-book. Still bent upon business, he pursued his course up along the coast, so close in shore that he discovered a bay of considerable size and importance, which now bears his name. After leaving this bay, which he ventured to enter, he again bethought himself of the river he had discovered, and was heading in that direction when he fell in with the British Exploring Squadron. Being hailed, he held a conversation with the officers, to whom he very frankly made known his supposed discovery, with its latitude and longitude. To this communication Vancouver replied that he too had seen the opening, but thought it unimportant. It might have been something in the tone in which the English officers begged to differ from him that fired Captain Gray's heart with a determination to settle the controversy without further delay. Pursuing his course southward he came once more in sight of the opening in the coast, and the weather continuing favorable, sailed without difficulty through the northern channel, across its formidable bar, and brought his vessel to anchor more than twenty miles inside the line of breakers.
We have always felt inclined to envy Captain Gray the triumph of that memorable day. We hope he felt the grandeur of it, and enjoyed it. It is something to discover a large river anywhere. But this one—so long desired, and when beheld so broad, so blue, so beautifully set in picturesque mountain shores!
The glory and contentment were enough for that day. The next, Captain Gray went ashore, and after exploring as well as he could the neighboring country, thickset with noble forests, returned to his ship, and recorded in his log-book the river's name. "I have called it," said he, "Columbia's River." Having remained several days to trade with the natives who crowded about the ship in their canoes, and to explore a few miles more of the river, he put to sea again, and went about his business in more northern waters.
What did Vancouver when the Yankee captain left him? He took counsel of prudence, and sent a lieutenant back with one of the vessels to take a second and closer view of the disputed inlet—if not outlet. When Lieutenant Meares beheld the terrors of the bar he decided not to take the vessel in, but to pursue his investigations in a smaller craft belonging to the ship's outfit. In this gig, or whatever it was, Meares entered the river and proceeded to ascend it. Having reached a small bay on the northern side fifteen or twenty miles inside the bar, he found there a small vessel at anchor belonging to a trading captain of his own nation—an Englishman, named Baker, who gave to the bay his own name, which it continues to bear at this day. Captain Baker had fallen in with Gray, and being told of his discovery, had made haste to confirm the report by actual observation.
When Lieutenant Meares had explored the river some eighty miles from its mouth, which his smaller craft easily permitted him to do, he returned to the commander of the squadron with his report, and Vancouver claimed for the British nation the credit of discovering the great river of the West. The actual river, he said, did not commence for some distance above Gray's anchorage! That was the quibble resorted to some years later, when British claims and boundary lines were being considered. That quibble, however, did not hold, as history assures us. That lucky persistence of Captain Gray's decided the question of right by discovery in favor of Americans.
Decency requiring that England should
