The Pacific Monthly.
Early Pilotage on the Columbia River,By P.W. Gillette.
ON the 17th day of August, 1775, Captain "Brono Heceta," an enterprising Spanish navigator, discovered the mouth of the Columbia River and named it "Rio de San Roque." It is shown on the old Spanish charts of the North American coast in the proper latitude for the Columbia. Heceta did not enter the river because, he said, the "current between the two points (meaning Cape Hancock and Point Adams) was too strong for his ship to stem. He said in his journal:
"The current and the eddies of the water caused me to believe the place to be the mouth of some great river, or some passage into another sea." Captain Heceta was evidently in close so that he could observe the tremendous outflow of the great river.
Three years later Captain John Meares, of the British Navy, went south from the Straits of Fuca purposely to see and verify the Rio de San Roque of Heceta. On the 5th day of July, 1778, he discovered and entered Shoalwater Bay and named the cape at its entrance "Cape Shoalwater." A few days later, while yet the summer freshet from melting snow was pouring its mighty flood into the ocean, he reached the mouth of Heceta's river and gave it a most careful inspection, and found to his satisfaction there was no river there; so he named the promontory overlooking what Heceta had supposed to be the mouth of a river, "Cape Disappointment," and the mouth of the river, itself he named "Deception Bay," because it had deceived the wily old Spaniard by making him believe it to be the mouth of a river. His journal reads: "We can now safely assert that no such river as San Roque exists, as laid down on the chart of Heceta." The cape that he named is still known as Cape Disappointment, although Captain Robert Gray named it Cape Hancock, and it is so described on the map. In this locality it is generally called Disappointment.
Fourteen years later George Vancouver, a famous navigator and an officer of the English Navy, in passing north along the Oregon coast, diligently hunting for the great unknown river of the West, says in his journal: "April 27, 1792—Nown brought us up into a conspicuous point of land, comprised of a cluster of hummocks, moderately high and extending into the sea."
Those hummocks were the point on which the old lighthouse stands, "McKenzie's Head," nearly a mile north, and the "North Head," on which the new lighthouse stands, two miles further north.
"On the south side of the promontory was the appearance of an inlet or small river, the land not indicating it to be of any great extent, nor did it seem to be accessible for vessels of our burden, as the breakers extended from above the point to three miles into the ocean, while they joined those on the beach nearly four leagues further south. On reference to Meares' description of the coast south of the promontory, I was first induced to believe it was Cape Shoalwater, but upon ascertaining its latitude, I
