Tell about Sam Houston and the Indians. Where did Houston go after he became governor of Tennessee? Where did Houston go next? What did he say he would do about Texas? What was David Crockett's motto? What is said about Fort Alamo? What about the battle with the Mexicans? What did Texas become? To what office was Houston elected? What is said of the Texas flag? When was Texas added to the United States? What war then broke out? What did we get by that war? What is said of General Houston in the great war between the North and the South?
[CAPTAIN ROBERT GRAY]
(1755-1806).
[233. Captain Gray goes to the Pacific coast to buy furs; he first carries the Stars and Stripes round the globe.]—Not long after the war of the Revolution had come to an end some merchants of Boston sent out two vessels to Vancouver[1] Island, on the northwest coast of America. The names of the vessels were the Columbia and the Lady Washington, and they sailed round Cape Horn into the Pacific. Captain Robert Gray went out as commander of one of these vessels.[2] He was born in Rhode Island[3] and he had fought in one of our war-ships in the Revolution.
| A SEA-OTTER. |
Captain Gray was sent out by the Boston merchants to buy furs from the Indians on the Pacific coast. He had no difficulty in getting all he wanted, for the savages were glad to sell them for very little. In one case a chief let the captain have two hundred sea-otter skins such as are used for ladies' sacks, and which were worth about eight thousand dollars, for an old iron chisel. After getting a valuable cargo of furs, Captain Gray sailed in the Columbia for China, where he bought a quantity of tea. He then went to the south, round the Cape of Good Hope, and keeping on toward the west he reached Boston in the summer of 1790. He had been gone about three years, and he was the first man who carried the American flag clear round the globe.
1 Vancouver (Van-koo'ver): part of it is seen north of Portland, Or., paragraph [235].
2 He commanded the Lady Washington at first, and afterward the Columbia.
3 Tiverton, Rhode Island.