The Columbia River Part 3

The two ships, the _Resolution_ and _Discovery_, took with them to China a quant.i.ty of furs from Nootka. A few years earlier, as previously stated, the Russian fur-trade from Avatcha to China had been inaugurated. A great demand for peltries sprang up at once. A new regime dawned in Chinese and East India trade. Gold, silver, and jewels had not thus far rewarded the search of explorers. They were reserved for our later days of need. But the fur-trade was as good as gold. The North Pacific Coast, already interesting, a.s.sumed a new importance in the eyes of Europeans. The "struggle for possession" was on. The ships of all nations converged upon the fabled Strait and River of Oregon. English, Dutch, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Americans, began in the decade of the eighties to crowd to the land where the sea-otter, beaver, seal, and many other of the most profitable furs could be obtained for a trifle. The dangers of trading and the chances of the sea were great, but the profits of success were yet greater.

The fur-trade began to take the place of the gold hunt as a matter of international strife. The manner in which our own country, weak and discordant as its different members were when just emerging from the Revolutionary War, entered the lists, and by the marvellous allotment of Fortune or the design of Providence, slipped in between the greater nations and secured the prize of Oregon, is one of the epics of history, one which ought to have some native Ta.s.so or Calderon to celebrate its triumph.

Following quickly upon the conclusion of the American War, came a series of British, French, and Russian voyages, which gradually centred more particularly about Vancouver Island and Nootka Sound. The British exceeded the others in numbers and enterprise. Among them we find names now preserved at many conspicuous points on the northern coast: as Portlock, Hanna, Dixon, Duncan, and Barclay. The most notable of the French was La Perouse, who was best equipped for scientific research of any one. A number of Russian names appear at that period, most of which may yet be found upon the maps of Alaska, as Schelikoff, Ismyloff, Betschareff, Resanoff, Krustenstern, and Baranoff.

But none of them set eyes on the River, and it seemed more mythical than ever. As a result, however, of their various expeditions, incomplete though they were, each nation followed the usual practice of claiming everything in sight, either in sight of the eye or the imagination, and demanded the whole coast by priority of discovery.

Never did a geographical ent.i.ty seem so to play the _ignis fatuus_ with the world as did the River. Thirteen years elapsed from the discovery of the Rio San Roque by Heceta before any one of the dozens who had meanwhile pa.s.sed up and down the coast, looked in again between the Cabo de Frondoso and the Cabo de San Roque. Then there came on one negative and two positive discoveries, and the elusive stream was really found never to be lost again.

The negative discovery was that of Captain John Meares in 1788. Since England afterwards endeavoured to make the voyages of Meares an important link in her chain of proof to the ownership of Oregon, it is worthy of some special attention. It happened on this wise. Meares came first to the coast of Oregon in 1786, in command of the _Nootka_ to trade for furs for the East India Company. With the _Nootka_ was the _Sea-Otter_, in command of Captain Walter Tipping. Both seem to have been brave and capable seamen. But disaster followed on their track. For having sailed far up the coast, they followed the Aleutian Archipelago eastward to Prince William's Sound. Separated on the journey, the _Nootka_ reached a safe haven, but her consort never arrived, nor was she ever heard of more. The _Nootka_, after an Arctic winter of distress and after losing a large part of the crew through the ravages of scurvy, abandoned the trade and returned to China. Discouraged by the outcome, the East India Company abandoned the American trade and confined themselves henceforth to India.

But Meares, finding that the Portuguese had special privileges in the fur-trade and in the harbour of Nootka, entered into an arrangement with some Portuguese traders whereby he went nominally as supercargo, but really as captain of the _Felice_, under the Portuguese flag. With her sailed the _Iphigenia_ with William Douglas occupying a place similar to that of Meares. In estimating the subsequent pretensions of Great Britain, the student of history may well remember that these two mariners, though Englishmen, were sailing under the flag of Portugal.

Reaching again the coast of Oregon, Meares looked in, June 29, 1788, at the broad entrance of an extensive strait which he believed to be the mythical Strait of Juan de Fuca of two centuries earlier, but which he did not pause to explore. He had resolved to solve the riddle of the Rio San Roque or the Ensenada de Asuncion or de Heceta, and turned his prow southward. On July 5th, in lat.i.tude 46 degrees 10 minutes, he perceived a deep bay which he considered at once to be the object of his search.

Essaying to enter, he found the water shoaling with dangerous rapidity and a prodigious easterly swell breaking on the sh.o.r.e. From the masthead it seemed that the breakers extended clear across the entrance. With rather curious timidity for a bold Briton right on the eve of a discovery for which all nations had been looking, Meares lost courage and hauled out, attaching the name Deception Bay to the inlet and Cape Disappointment to the northern promontory, the last a name still officially used.

Meares left as his final conclusion in the matter, the following memorandum: "We can now a.s.sert that there is no such river as that of St.

Roc exists, as laid down in the Spanish charts." In view of this statement of the case it would certainly seem that he could not be accepted as a witness for English discovery, even if the Portuguese flag had not been flying at his masthead.

After bestowing the name of Lookout upon the great headland christened Cape Falcon by Heceta and known to us as Tillamook Head, Meares squared away for Nootka, and there he spent a very profitable season in the fur-trade.

But into the harbour of Nootka that same year of 1788, there sailed the ship of destiny, the _Columbia Rediviva_, in command of John Kendrick.

With the _Columbia_ came the _Lady Washington_, commanded by Robert Gray.

These were the advance guard of Yankee ships which the energies of our liberated forefathers were sending forth as an earnest of the coming conquest of Oregon by the universal Yankee nation.

Gray and Kendrick were engaged in the fur-trade, and their energy and intelligence made it speedily profitable. It took a long time and a long arm, sure enough, in that day, to complete the great circuit of the outfitting, the bartering, the transferring, the return trip, and the final sale;--three years in all. The ship would be fitted out in Boston or New York with trinkets, axes, hatchets, and tobacco, and proceed by the Horn to the coast of Oregon,--six months or sometimes eight. Then up and down the coast, as far as known, they would trade with natives for the precious furs, making a profit of a thousand per cent. on the investment.

Gray on one occasion got for an axe a quant.i.ty of furs worth $8000. The fur-barter would take another six or eight months. Then with hold packed with bales of furs, the ship would square away for Macao or Canton, six or eight months more. In China, the cargo of furs would go out and a cargo of nankeens, teas, and silks go in, with a great margin of profit at both ends. Then away again to Boston, there to sell the proceeds of that three years' "round-up" of the seas, for probably ten times the entire cost of outfitting and subsistence. The glory, fascination, and gain of the ocean were in it, and also its dangers. Of this sufficient witness is found in vanished ships, murdered crews, storm, scurvy, famine, and war. But it was a great age. Gray and Kendrick were as good specimens of their keen, facile, far-sighted countrymen, as Meares and Vancouver were of the self-opinionated, determined, yet withal manly and thorough Britons.

Among other pressing matters, such as looking out for good fur-trade in order to recoup the Boston merchants who had put their good money into the venture, and looking out for the health of their crew, steering clear of the uncharted reefs and avoiding the treacherous natives, Gray and Kendrick remembered that they were also good Americans. They must see that the new Stars and Stripes had their due upon the new coast.

The first voyage of the two Yankee skippers was ended and they set forth for another round in 1791, but with ships exchanged, Gray commanding the _Columbia_ on this second voyage. The year 1792 was now come, and it was a great year in the annals of Oregon, three hundred years from Columbus, two hundred from Juan de Fuca. The struggle between England and Spain over conflicting rights at Nootka, which at one time threatened war, had been settled with a measure of amicability. As a commissioner to represent Great Britain, Captain George Vancouver was sent out, while Bodega y Quadra was empowered to act in like capacity for Spain. Spaniards and Britons alike realised that, whatever the Nootka treaty may have been, possession was nine points of the law, and both redoubled their efforts to push discovery, and especially to make the first complete exploration of the Straits of Fuca and the supposed Great River. There were great names among the Spaniards in that year, some of which still commemorate some of the most interesting geographical points, as Quimper, Malaspina, Fidalgo, Caamano, Elisa, Bustamente, Valdez, and Galiano. A list of British names now applied to many points, as Vancouver, Puget, Georgia, Baker, Hood, Rainier, St. Helens, Whidby, Vashon, Townsend, and others, attests the name-bestowing care of the British commander.

In going to Nootka as British commissioner, Vancouver was under instructions to make the most careful examination of the coast, especially of the rivers or any interoceanic channels, and thereby clear up the many conundrums of the ocean on that sh.o.r.e. With the best ship, the war sloop _Discovery_, accompanied by the armed tender _Chatham_, in command of Lieutenant W. R. Broughton, and with the best crew and best general equipment yet seen on the coast, it would have been expected that the doughty Briton would have found all the important places yet unfound.

That the Americans beat him in finding the River and that the Spaniards beat him in the race through the Straits and around Vancouver Island, may be regarded as due partly to a little British obstinacy at a critical time, but mainly due to the appointment of the Fates.

On April 27, 1792, Vancouver pa.s.sed a "conspicuous point of land composed of a cl.u.s.ter of hummocks, moderately high and projecting into the sea."

This cape was in lat.i.tude 46 degrees 19 minutes, and Vancouver decided that here were doubtless the Cape Disappointment and Deception Bay of Meares. In spite of the significant fact that the sea here changed its colour, the British commander was so prepossessed with the idea that Meares must have decided correctly the nature of the entrance (for how was it possible for an English sailor to be wrong and a Spaniard right?) that he decided that the opening was not worthy of more attention and pa.s.sed on up the coast. So the English lost their second great chance of being first to enter the River.

Two days later the lookout reported a sail, and as the ships drew together, the newcomer was seen to be flying the Stars and Stripes. It was the _Columbia Rediviva_, Captain Robert Gray, of Boston. In response to Vancouver's rather patronising queries, the Yankee skipper gave a summary of his log for some months past. Among other things he stated that he had pa.s.sed what seemed to be a powerful river in lat.i.tude 46 degrees 10 minutes, which for nine days he had tried in vain to enter, being repelled by the strength of the current. He now proposed returning to that point and renewing his effort. Vancouver declined to reconsider his previous decision that there could be no large river, and pa.s.sed on to make his very elaborate exploration of the Straits of Fuca and their connected waters, and to discover to his great chagrin, that the Spaniards had forestalled him in point of time.

The vessels parted. Gray sailed south and on May 10, 1792, paused abreast of the same reflex of water where before for nine days he had tried vainly to enter. The morning of the 11th dawned clear and favourable, light wind, gentle sea, a broad, clear channel, plainly of sufficient depth. The time was now come. The man and the occasion met. Gray seems from the first to have been ready to take some chances for the sake of some great success.

He always hugged the sh.o.r.e closely enough to be on intimate terms with it.

And he was ready boldly to seize and use favouring circ.u.mstances. So, as laconically stated in his log-book, he ran in with all sail set, and at ten o'clock found himself in a large river of fresh water, at a point about twenty miles from the ocean.

The geographical Sphinx was answered. Gray was its Oedipus, though unlike the ancient Theban myth there was no need that either the Sphinx of the Oregon coast or its discoverer perish. The River recognised and welcomed its master.

The next day the _Columbia_ moved fifteen miles up the stream. Finding that he was out of the channel, Gray stopped further progress and turned again seaward. Natives, apparently friendly disposed, thronged in canoes round the ship, and a large quant.i.ty of furs was secured.

The River already bore many names, but Gray added another, and it was the one that has remained, the name of his good ship _Columbia_. Upon the southern cape he bestowed the name of Adams, and upon the northern, the name Hanc.o.c.k. These also remain.

The great exploit was completed. The long sought River of the West was found, and by an American. The path of destiny for the new Republic of the West was made secure. Without Oregon we probably would not have acquired California, and without a Pacific Coast, the United States would inevitably have been but a second-cla.s.s power, the prey to European intrigue. The vast importance of the issue then becomes clear. Gray's happy voyage, that Yankee foresight and confidence in his seamanship and intuitive suiting of times and conditions to results which marks the vital turning points of history, differentiate Gray's discovery from all others upon our north-west coast.

As we view the matter now, a century and more later, we can see that our national destiny, and especially the vast part that we now seem at the point of taking in world interests through the commerce of the Pacific, hung in the balance to a certain extent upon the stubborn adherence by Vancouver, the Briton, to the preconceived opinion that there was no important river at the point designated by his Spanish predecessor, and the contrasted readiness of the American Gray to embrace boldly the chances of some great discovery. It is true that the "Oregon Question" was not to be settled for several decades. Much diplomacy and contention, almost to the verge of war, were yet to come, but Gray's fortunate dash, "with all sail set, in between the breakers to a large river of fresh water," gave our nation a lead in the ultimate adjustment of the case, which we never lost.

We have said that there was one negative discovery--that of Meares--and two positive ones. Gray's was one of the two, and that of Broughton, in command of the _Chatham_ accompanying Vancouver, was the other.

On the 20th of May, the _Columbia Rediviva_--a most auspicious name--bade adieu to the scene of her glory, and with the Stars and Stripes floating in triumph at her mizzen-mast, turned northward. Again the American captain encountered Vancouver and narrated to him his discovery of the Columbia. With deep chagrin at his own failure in the two most important objects of discovery in his voyage, the British commander directed Broughton to return to lat.i.tude 46 degrees 10 minutes, enter the river, and proceed as far up as time allowed.

Accordingly, on October 21st, the companion ships parted at the mouth of the River, the _Discovery_ proceeding to Monterey, while the _Chatham_ crossed the bar, described by Broughton as very bad, and endeavoured to ascend the bay that stretched out beautiful and broad before them. But finding the channel intricate and soundings variable, the lieutenant deemed it advisable to leave the ship at a point which must have been about twenty miles from the ocean, and to proceed thence in the cutter.

There is one thing observable in Vancouver's account of this expedition of Broughton, and that is extreme solicitude to establish these two propositions:--first, that the lower part of the Columbia is a bay and that its true mouth is at a point above that reached by Gray; and second, that the River is much smaller than it really is. It is hard to reconcile the language used in Broughton's report as given by Vancouver with the supposition of candour and honesty. For while it is true that the lower part of the River is of bay-like expanse from four to nine miles in width, yet it is entirely fresh and has all river characteristics. One of the points especially made by Gray was that he filled his casks with fresh water. Moreover, the bar is entirely at the ocean limit. So completely does the River debouch into the Ocean, in fact, that in the great flood of 1894 the clams were killed on the ocean beaches for a distance of several miles on either side of the outer headlands through the freshening of the sea.

As to the size of the River, Broughton gives its width repeatedly as half a mile or a quarter of a mile, whereas it is at almost no point below the Cascades less than a mile in width, and a mile and a half is more usual.

Broughton expresses the conviction that it can never be used for navigation by vessels of any size. In view of the vast commerce now constantly pa.s.sing in and out, the absurdity of that idea is and has been for years sufficiently exhibited. The animus of the British explorers is obvious. By showing that the mouth of the River was really an inlet of the sea, they hoped to lay a claim to British occupancy as against Gray's discovery, and by belittling the size of the River they hoped to save their own credit with the British Admiralty for having lost so great a chance for first occupation.

Broughton ascended the River to a point near the modern town of Washougal.

He bestowed British names after the general fashion, as Mt. Hood, Cape George, Vancouver Point, Puget's Island, Young's Bay, Menzies' Island, and Whidby's River. With true British a.s.surance, he felt that he had "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 was ever within five leagues of its entrance." Therefore he "took possession of the river, and the country in its vicinity, in His Britannic Majesty's name."

In view of all the circ.u.mstances of Gray's discovery, and his impartation of it to the British, this language of Vancouver has a coolness, as John Fiske remarks, which would be very refreshing on a hot day.

On November 10th, the _Chatham_ crossed the bar outward bound for Monterey to join the _Discovery_.

Such, in rapid view, were the essential facts in the long and curiously complicated finding of our River. We see that various nations bore each a part. We see the foundation of the subsequent contention between Great Britain and the United States.

CHAPTER IV

The First Steps across the Wilderness in Search of the River

Jefferson and Ledyard--Verendrye--Montcachabe, the Indian--The Indians--The Canadians--Results of the Louisiana Purchase--Fitting out the Lewis and Clark Expedition--The Winter with the Mandans--Crossing of the Great Divide--Meeting of Sacajawea and Cameahwait--Descent from the Mountains to the Clearwater and Kimooenim--Canoe Journey Down the Snake and Columbia--First Sight of Mt. Hood--Clark in the Role of a Magician--The Timm or Great Falls--The Sunken Forests--First Appearances of the Tide--The Winter of 1805-06 at Fort Clatsop--The Beginning of the Return Trip--Faithfulness of the Indians--Reception of Lewis and Clark in the States--The Hunt Expedition--The _Voyageurs_ and Trappers--Slow Progress to the Snake River--Disasters and Distress along the "Accursed Mad River"--Starvation--New Year's Day of 1812--A Respite from Suffering in the Umatilla--First Sight of the Columbia and the Mid-winter Descent to Astoria--Melancholy Lot of Crooks and Day--Results of the Hunt Expedition.

The Pacific North-west was discovered both by land and by sea. To Thomas Jefferson, the great apostle of Democracy, is due the gathering of American interests in the far West, and the opening of the road by which American sovereignty was to reach the Pacific. His great mind outran that of the ordinary statesman of his time, and, with what seems at first sight the strangest inconsistency in our political history, he was the State-rights theorist and at the same time the creator of nationality beyond any other one of our early statesmen. Away back in 1786, Jefferson met John Ledyard, one of Cook's a.s.sociates in his great voyage to the Pacific Ocean, and grasped from the eager and energetic Yankee sailor, the idea of American destiny on the Pacific Coast. The fertile mind of Jefferson may justly be considered as the fountain of American exploration up the Missouri, across the crest of the Shining Mountains, as they then called the Rockies, and down the Columbia to the Pacific. Although Jefferson never himself took any steps beyond the Alleghanies, he was the inspiration of all the Americans who did take those steps.

Since we are speaking of first steps across the wilderness we should not forget that those of other nationalities than ours first crossed the American continent. The honour of the pioneer expedition to the crest of the Rocky Mountains belongs to the Frenchman, Verendrye. In 1773 he set forth from Montreal for the Rocky Mountains, and made many important explorations. His party is said to have reached the vicinity of the site of Helena, but never saw the sunset side of the Great Divide.

We are told by the interesting French writer, La Page, that the first man to proceed across the continent to the sh.o.r.es of the Pacific was a Yazoo Indian, Montcachabe or Montcacht Ape by name. According to the story, his two-year journey across the great wilderness through every species of peril and hardship, savage beasts and forbidding mountains and deserts, hostile Indians often barring his progress for many days, was one of the most remarkable explorations ever made by man. This Yazoo Indian with the long name was a veritable Columbus in the nature of his achievements. But results for the world could hardly follow his enterprise.

The first traveller to lead a party of civilised men through the Shining, or the Stony Mountains, finally known as Rocky Mountains, to the Pacific Ocean, was Alexander Mackenzie, a canny Scotchman, leading a party of Scotch and French Canadian explorers. In 1793 he reached the Pacific Coast at the point of 52 degrees 24 minutes 48 seconds north lat.i.tude. His inscription upon a rock with letters of vermilion and grease, were read many years afterwards: "Alexander Mackenzie, from Canada by land, July 22, 1793."

But the explorations of Canadians were too far north to come within the scope of the Pacific North-west of our day. We must therefore take up the American expeditions which proceeded from the master mind of Jefferson.

The first of these was the expedition of Lewis and Clark. This expedition did more to broaden the American mind and to fix our national destiny than any similar event in our whole history.

As soon as Jefferson was inaugurated president, he had urged upon Congress the fitting out of an expedition "to explore the Missouri River and such princ.i.p.al streams of it as, by its course of communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean, whether the Columbia, Oregon, Colorado, or any other river, may offer the most direct and practical water communication across the continent, for the purposes of commerce."

But before anything had actually been accomplished in the way of exploration, that vast and important event, the Louisiana Purchase, had been effected. The significance of this event was but little understood at the time, even by statesmen, but Jefferson realised that a great thing had been accomplished towards the development of the nation. His enthusiasm and hopefulness spread to Congress and to the leaders of opinion throughout the land. A like enthusiasm soon possessed the ma.s.s of population, and emigration westward began. Already the older West was teeming with that race of pioneers which has made up the life and the grandeur of the nineteenth century. The American hive began to swarm. "Out West" began to mean something more than Ohio and Kentucky. The distant sources of the Missouri and the heights of the Shining Mountains, with all the fantastic tales that had been told of them, were drawing our grandfathers farther and farther from the old colonial America of the eastern coast, and were beginning to modify the whole course of American history. The atmosphere of boundless expectation gathered over farm and town in the older States and the proposed expedition of Lewis and Clark fascinated the people as much as the voyage of Columbus fascinated the Spain of his day.