The purport of Vancouver’s observations in the passage just cited will not be correctly appreciated, unless his instructions are kept in mind, which directed his attention exclusively to such inlets or rivers which should appear to be navigable to sea-going vessels, and be likely to facilitate in any considerable degree a communication with the northwest coast. Vancouver seems to have advanced a step beyond Heceta in observing the river-coloured water, and so determining the inlet not to be a strait of the sea; but he rightly decided that the opening in the north part of the bay was not worthy of attention, either in respect to his main object of discovering a water-communication with the northwest coast, or to the prospect of its affording a certain shelter to sea-going vessels.
Vancouver, as he approached De Fuca’s Straits on 29th April, when off Cape Flattery, fell in with the merchant ship Columbia, commanded by Mr. Robert Gray, which had sailed from Boston on the 28th Sept., 1788. Captain Gray had formerly commanded the Washington, when that vessel and the Columbia, commanded by Captain John Kendrick, visited Nootka in 1788. Having given Vancouver some information respecting De Fuca’s Straits, he stated that he had “been off the mouth of a river in the latitude of 46° 10′, where the outset, or reflux, was so strong as to prevent his entering it for nine days. This,” continues Vancouver, “was probably the opening passed by us on the forenoon of the 27th, and was apparently then inaccessible, not from the current, but from the breakers that extended across it.” Gray at this time had not succeeded in passing the bar at the mouth of the Columbia. After parting from Vancouver, he continued his course to the southward for the purposes of his summer trade. The extract from his own log-book, which Mr. Greenhow has inserted in his Appendix, will furnish the best account of his proceedings:—“May 11th, at 4 A.M. saw the entrance of our desired port bearing E.S.E., distance six leagues; in steering sails, and hauled our wind in shore. At 8 A.M., being a little to windward of the entrance into the harbour, bore away and run in E.N.E. between the breakers, having from five to seven fathoms water. When we came over the bar, we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered.”
In the British statement it is admitted that “Mr. Gray, finding himself in the bay formed by the discharge of the waters of the Columbia into the Pacific, was the first to ascertain that this bay formed the outlet of a great river—a discovery which had escaped Lieutenant Meares, when in 1788, four years before, he entered the same bay.”
This passage has been quoted to show that the claim of Captain Gray to the honour of having first crossed the bar of the river has not been impeached by the British Commissioners. He gave to the river the name of his own vessel, the Columbia.
The Columbia remained at anchor on the 12th and 13th. On the 14th of May, Gray weighed anchor, and stood up the river N.E. by E.
The log-book of the Columbia furnishes the following extract:—
“We found the channel very narrow. At 4 P.M. we had sailed upwards of twelve or fifteen miles, when the channel was so very narrow that it was almost impossible to keep in it, having from three to eighteen fathoms water, sandy bottom. At half-past four the ship took ground, but she did not stay long before she came off; without any assistance. We backed her off stern-foremost into three fathoms, and let go the small bower, and moved ship with kedge and hawser. The jolly-boat was sent to sound the channel out, but found it not navigable any further up; so of course we must have taken the wrong channel. So ends, with rainy weather; many natives alongside.” On the following day Gray unmoored, and dropped down the river with the tide. On the 18th he made the latitude of the entrance to be 46° 17′ north. On the 20th he succeeded, after some difficulty, in beating over the bar out to sea.
This log-book, the authenticity of which is vouched for by Mr. Bulfinch, of Boston, one of the owners of the Columbia, affords the best evidence that Captain Gray’s claim is limited to the discovery of the mouth of the Columbia, a discovery different indeed in degree from Heceta’s or Vancouver’s, and entitled to higher consideration, but not different in kind. It must be remembered that the problem to be solved was the discovery of the Great River of the West, but this problem was surely not solved by Gray, who expressly states that the channel which he explored was not navigable any further up than twelve or fifteen miles from the entrance; “so of course,” he adds, “we must have taken the wrong channel.” But such a description would hardly have convinced the world that Gray had succeeded in discovering the Great River, unless Lieutenant Broughton had subsequently succeeded in entering the right channel, and had explored its course for the distance of more than one hundred miles from the sea. But the reputation of this enterprising man needs no fictitious laurels. He was decidedly the first to solve the difficult question of their being a passage, such as it is, over the bar of the river.
Mr. Greenhow, in commenting upon Gray’s discovery, observes, “Had Gray, after parting with the English ships, not returned to the river, and ascended it as he did, there is every reason to believe that it would have long remained unknown; for the assertion of Vancouver, that no opening, harbour, or place of refuge for vessels was to be found between Cape Mendocino and the Strait of Fuca, and that this part of the coast formed one compact, solid, and nearly straight barrier against the sea, would have served completely to overthrow the evidence of the American fur-trader, and to prevent any further attempts to examine those shores, or even to approach them.”
Now the evidence of the American fur-trader, had he not returned to the river, would have needed no Vancouver to overthrow it, for it would have amounted to this, that Gray had been off the mouth of a river for nine days, without being able to enter it; whereas Vancouver’s own statement would have been, that on the south side of Cape Disappointment there was the appearance of an inlet or small river, “which did not however seem accessible for vessels of our burthen,” as breakers extended right across it. Mr. Greenhow misrepresents Vancouver, when he states that Meares’ opinion was subscribed without qualification by Vancouver, for Vancouver carefully limits his opinion of the river to its being inaccessible to vessels of equal burthen with his own sloop of war, the Discovery.