On a second voyage to the same region, in the good ship Columbia, Gray discovered the mouth of a great river (1792). Up this river he went for nearly thirty miles, probably the first white man to sail upon its waters. Captain Gray named the river the Columbia after his vessel. The Indians had called it the Oregon.
CAPTAIN MERIWETHER LEWIS
From the original painting by Charles Wilson Peale in Independence Hall, Philadelphia
119. The Lewis and Clark Expedition. The next important step in finding a route to the Oregon country was the great expedition undertaken while Thomas Jefferson was yet president.
Expedition leaves St. Louis
Lewis and Clark were two young men chosen by Jefferson to explore the region known as the Louisiana Purchase and to make their way across the Rocky Mountains to the Oregon country and to the Pacific. They chose forty-two men to go with them—some as soldiers, others as servants, and still others as hunters. From the little French village of St. Louis they began their adventurous journey in boats in the spring of 1804.
Up the Missouri River they slowly made their way against the current of the muddy, rushing stream. At one time it was so swift that they could not force boats against it, and at another time the brushwood that came down the river broke their oars.
Smoked the "pipe of peace"