| MOUNT HOOD, OREGON. |
| CAPTAIN GRAY EXPLORING THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON. |
[234. Captain Gray's second voyage to the Pacific coast; he enters a great river and names it the Columbia; the United States claims the Oregon country; we get Oregon in 1846.]—Captain Gray did not stay long at Boston, for he sailed again that autumn in the Columbia for the Pacific coast, to buy more furs. He stayed on that coast a long time. In the spring of 1792 he entered a great river and sailed up it a distance of nearly thirty miles. He seems to have been the first white man who had ever actually entered it. He named the vast stream the Columbia River, from the name of his vessel. It is the largest American river which empties into the Pacific Ocean south of Alaska.[4]
Captain Gray returned to Boston and gave an account of his voyage of exploration; this led Congress to claim the country through which the Columbia flows[5] as part of the United States.
After Captain Gray had been dead for forty years we came into possession, in 1846, of the immense territory then called the Oregon Country. It was through what he had done that we got our first claim to that country which now forms the states of Oregon and Washington.
4 The Yukon River in Alaska is larger than the Columbia.
5 The discovery and exploration of a river usually gives the right to a claim to the country watered by that river, on the part of the nation to which the discoverer or explorer belongs.
[235. Summary.]—A little over a hundred years ago (1790) Captain Robert Gray of Rhode Island first carried the American flag round the world. In 1792 he entered and named the Columbia River. Because he did that the United States claimed the country—called the Oregon Country—through which that river runs. In 1846 we added the Oregon Country to our possessions; it now forms the two states of Oregon and Washington.
| Map showing the extent of the United States after we added the Oregon Country in 1846. |