The Oregon Territory, Its History and Discovery

by Travers Twiss

Gray, after entering the Columbia, appears to have returned to Nootka, and to have given to Señor Quadra, the Spanish commandant, a sketch of the river. Vancouver, having attempted in vain to conclude a satisfactory arrangement with Quadra in respect to the fulfilment of the first article of the Nootka Convention, determined to re-examine the coast of New Albion. With this object he sailed southward in the Discovery, accompanied by the Chatham and the Dædalus. The Dædalus having been left to explore Gray’s harbour in 46° 53′, the Discovery and Chatham proceeded round Cape Disappointment, and the Chatham, under Lieutenant Broughton, was directed to lead into the Columbia river, and to signalize her consort if only four fathoms water should be found over the bar. The Discovery followed the Chatham, till Vancouver found the water to shoal to three fathoms, with breakers all around, which induced him to haul off to the westward, and anchor outside the bar in ten fathoms. The Chatham, in the meantime, cast anchor in the midst of the breakers, where she rode in four fathoms, with the surf breaking over her. “My former opinion,” writes Vancouver, “of this port being inaccessible to vessels of our burthen was now fully confirmed, with this exception, that in very fine weather, with moderate winds and a smooth sea, vessels not exceeding 400 tons might, so far as we were able to judge, gain admittance.” It may be observed that the vessels of the Hudson’s Bay Company, by which the commerce of this part of the country is almost exclusively carried on, do not exceed 360 tons, and draw only fourteen feet water. Captain Wilkes, in the United States Exploring Expedition, vol. iv., p. 489, speaks of a vessel of from 500 to 600 tons, the Lausanne, having navigated the Columbia; on the other hand, the Starling, which accompanied the Sulphur exploring vessel, under Captain Belcher, in July, 1839, left her rudder on the bar, and the American corvette, the Peacock, which attempted to enter the river in July, 1841, was lost in very fine weather, having been drifted amongst the breakers by the set of the current.

When it is known that the vessels of the Hudson’s Bay Company have been obliged to lie-to off the mouth of the Columbia for upwards of two months before they could venture to cross the bar, and that vessels have been detained inside the bar for upwards of six weeks, it must be acknowledged that Vancouver’s declaration of the probable character of the river has not fallen very wide of the mark.

On the next day the Chatham succeeded, with the flood-tide, in leading through the channel, and anchored in a tolerably snug cove inside Cape Disappointment; but the Discovery, not having made so much way, was driven out by a strong ebb tide into 13 fathoms water, where she anchored for the night, and on the following day was forced by a gale of wind to stand out to sea, and to abandon all hope of regaining the river.

On the Chatham rounding the inner point of Cape Disappointment, they were surprised to hear a gun fired from a vessel, which hoisted English colours, and proved to be the Jenny, a small schooner of Bristol, commanded by Mr. James Baker, which had sailed from Nootka Sound direct to England, before Vancouver started. This cove or bay inside Cape Disappointment was in consequence named, by Lieut. Broughton, Baker’s Bay, which name it retains, and it appeared from Captain Baker’s account that this was not the first occasion of his entering the river, but that he had been there in the earlier part of the year.

The Chatham in the meantime proceeded up the inlet, and having in her course grounded for a short time on a shoal, anchored ultimately a little below the bay which had terminated Gray’s researches, to which Gray had given his own name in his chart. The sketch of this, with which Vancouver had been favoured by the Spanish commandant at Nootka, was found by Broughton not to resemble much what it purported to represent, nor did it mark the shoal on which the Chatham grounded, though it was an extensive one, lying in mid-channel. The bay, for instance, which Lieut. Broughton found to be not more than fifteen miles from Cape Disappointment, was, according to the sketch, thirty-six miles distant. Broughton left the Chatham here, and determined to pursue the further examination of the channel in the cutter and the launch.

At the distance of about twenty-five miles from the sea, Broughton found the stream narrow rather suddenly to about half a mile in breadth, which seemed to warrant him in considering the lower part, (the width of which was from three to seven miles,) to be a sound or inlet, and the true entrance of the river itself to commence from the point where it contracted itself. Broughton continued his ascent for seven days, making but slow progress against a strong stream. At the end of that time he was obliged to return from want of provisions, having reached a point which he concluded to be about 100 miles distant from the Chatham’s anchorage, and nearly 120 from the sea. He was the more readily reconciled to the abandonment of any further examination, “because even thus far the river could hardly be considered as navigable for shipping.” Previously, however, to his departure, he formally “took possession of the river and the country in its vicinity in his Britannic Majesty’s name, having every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilised nation or state had ever entered this river before.” Broughton had fallen in with large parties of Indians in his ascent of the river, and had been kindly received by them. Amongst these was a friendly old chief, who accompanied them almost throughout the voyage, and who assisted at the ceremony and drank his Majesty’s health on the occasion. It may be reasonably suspected that this worthy old chief would have as readily joined the next comers in drinking the health of the King of Spain, or the President of the United States. From him Broughton endeavoured to obtain further information respecting the upper country. “The little that could be understood was, that higher up the river, they would be prevented from passing by falls. This was explained by taking water up in his hands, and imitating the manner of its falling from rocks, pointing at the same time to the place where the river rises, indicating that its source in that direction would be found at a great distance.”

The furthest angle of the river which Broughton reached was called by him Point Vancouver, and upon it stands in the present day Fort Vancouver, the chief establishment of the Hudson’s Bay Company. A little above this are the Cascades, a series of falls and rapids extending more than half a mile, which form the limit of the tide-way; about thirty miles higher up are the Dalles, where the river rushes rapidly between vast masses of rocks, and about four miles further are the Chutes or Falls of the Columbia, where the river first enters the gap in the Cascade mountains, through which it finds its way to the ocean. Lieutenant Broughton, having occupied twelve days in the examination of the channel, prepared to join the Discovery without delay; but for four days the surf broke across the passage of the bar with such violence, as to leave no apparent opening. At last he succeeded in beating out, the Jenny schooner leading, as her commander Mr. Baker was better acquainted with the course of the channel, and after nearly losing their launch and the boat-keeper in the surf, they once more reached the open sea. Such is the summary of the account, which may be perused in full in the second volume of Vancouver’s Voyage.

Mr. Greenhow (p. 248) considers that the distinction which Broughton and Vancouver made “between the upper and lower portion of the Columbia, is entirely destitute of foundation, and at variance with the principles of our whole geographical nomenclature. Inlets and sounds,” he continues, “are arms of the sea running up into the land, and their waters, being supplied from the sea, are necessarily salt; the waters of the Columbia are on the contrary generally fresh and palatable within ten miles of the Pacific, the violence and overbearing force of the current being sufficient to prevent the further ingress of the ocean. The question appears at first to be of no consequence: the following extract from Vancouver’s Journal will, however, serve to show that the quibble was devised by the British navigators, with the unworthy object of depriving Gray of the merits of his discovery:—‘Previously to his (Broughton’s) departure, he formally took possession of the river, and the country in its vicinity, in his Britannic Majesty’s name, having every reason to believe that the subjects of no other civilised nation or state had ever entered this river before. In this opinion he was confirmed by Mr. Gray’s sketch, in which it does not appear that Mr. Gray either saw or ever was within five leagues of its entrance.’ This unjust view has been adopted by the British Government and writers, and also, doubtless from inadvertency, by some distinguished authors in the United States. It may, indeed, be considered fortunate for Gray, that by communicating the particulars of his discoveries, as he did, to Quadra, he secured an unimpeachable witness of his claims: had he not done so, the world would probably never have learned that a citizen of the United States was the first to enter the greatest river flowing from America into the Pacific, and to find the only safe harbour on the long line of coast between Port San Francisco and the Strait of Fuca.”

Mr. Greenhow may be perfectly justified in disputing the propriety of Lt. Broughton’s distinction. The words of the latter are,—“Between the ocean and that which should properly be considered the entrance of the river, is a space from three to seven miles wide, intricate to navigate on account of the shoals that extend nearly from side to side, and it ought rather to be considered as a sound than as constituting a part of the river, since the entrance into the river, which they reached about dark, was found not to be more than half a mile wide, formed by the contracting shores of the sound.” It may fairly be admitted that the ordinary use of the terms “sound,” or “inlet,” warrants the verbal criticism of Mr. Greenhow, and that they are more usually employed to distinguish arms of the sea where there is no fresh water, or tideways outside the bars of rivers. Lieutenant Broughton, if we may judge from the context would have been more correct had he used the term “estuary” instead of “sound,” for, “in common understanding,” as Lord Stowell has observed, “the embouchure or mouth of a river is that spot where the river enters the open space to which the sea flows, and where the points of the coast project no further.” (Twee Gebroeden, 3 Robinson’s Reports, p. 34.) At the same time, after a careful perusal of Vancouver’s journal, a protest must be entered against any reader of that work, particularly against one who occupies the position which Mr. Greenhow fills, attributing such motives to the British navigator, or insinuating such a probability as that Gray’s discovery would have been suppressed by Vancouver, had not Gray fortunately secured Quadra as an unimpeachable witness to it. Mr. Greenhow’s jealousy for the fame of his countryman may be excusable up to a certain point, but when he states that Vancouver “did not hesitate to adopt unworthy means to deprive the Americans of the reputation which they had justly earned by their labours in exploring, and to blacken their characters as individuals,” he has allowed an unreasonable sensitiveness to hurry him into the commission of the very fault which he censures in others, and has laid himself open to the identical charge, mutatis mutandis, which he has set up against Vancouver.

Had there been any substantial misrepresentation on the part of Vancouver in respect to what Gray actually did discover, “a want of good faith” might have been reasonably imputed to him. Happily, however, for Vancouver’s memory, the extract from the log-book of the Columbia bears out all the facts which Lieutenant Broughton alleges as to the extent of Gray’s researches. “From this point,” the latter says, alluding to a remarkable projecting point on the southern side, appearing like an island, a little above Point George, to which the name of Tongue Point was given, “was seen the centre of a deep bay, lying at the distance of seven miles N. 26 E. This bay terminated the researches of Mr. Gray; and to commemorate his discovery, it was called after him, Gray’s Bay.” “In Mr. Gray’s sketch,” Broughton further informs us, “an anchor was placed in this bay,” so that he does not attempt in any way to misrepresent the locality of the spot where Gray’s researches terminated. Lieutenant Broughton certainly denies the correctness of the sketch in respect to the distance of this bay from the entrance of the river. “It was not more,” he writes, “than fifteen miles from Cape Disappointment, though according to the sketch it measures thirty-six miles.” But the log-book itself confirms approximatively Lieutenant Broughton’s statement, for it makes the distance of the spot where Gray brought up his vessel to be about twenty-two or twenty-five miles from the entrance between the bars, and Cape Disappointment is six miles distant from the entrance, so that there must have been an error in the sketch, if we admit the accuracy of the log-book.