urnal,
_Voyage to the Pacific Ocean_, London, 1784, supplemented by the
letters and journals of men who were with him, like Ledyard, Vancouver,
Portlock, and Dixon, and others.

[4] In reiterating the impossibility of finding a passage from ocean to
ocean, either northeast or northwest, no disparagement is cast on such
feats as that of Nordenskjoeld along the north of Asia, in the _Vega_ in
1882.

By "passage" is meant a waterway practicable for ocean vessels, not for
the ocean freak of a specially constructed Arctic vessel that dodges
for a year or more among the ice-floes in an endeavor to pass from
Atlantic to Pacific, or _vice versa_.

{210}

CHAPTER VIII

1785-1792

ROBERT GRAY, THE AMERICAN DISCOVERER OF THE COLUMBIA

Boston Merchants, inspired by Cook's Voyages, outfit two Vessels under
Kendrick and Gray for Discovery and Trade on the Pacific--Adventures of
the First Ship to carry the American Flag around the World--Gray
attacked by Indians at Tillamook Bay--His Discovery of the Columbia
River on the Second Voyage--Fort Defence and the First American Ship
built on the Pacific

It is an odd thing that wherever French or British fur traders went to
a new territory, they found the Indians referred to American traders,
not as "Americans," but "Bostons" or "_Bostonnais_." The reason was
plain. Boston merchants won a reputation as first to act. It was they
who began a certain memorable "Boston Tea Party"; and before the rest
of the world had recovered the shock of that event, these same
merchants were planning to capture the trade of the Pacific Ocean, get
possession of all the Pacific coast not already preempted by Spain,
Russia, or England, and push American commerce across the Pacific to
Asia.

{211} What with slow printing-presses and slow travel, the account of
Cook's voyages on the Pacific did not become generally known in the
United States till 1785 or 1786. Sitting round the library of Dr.
Bulfinch's residence on Bowdoin Square in Boston one night in 1787,
were half a dozen adventurous spirits for whom Cook's account of the
fur trade on the Pacific had an irresistible fascination. There was
the doctor himself. There was his son, Charles, of Harvard, just back
from Europe and destined to become famous as an architect. There was
Joseph Barrell, a prosperous merchant. There was John Derby, a
shipmaster of Salem, a young man still, but who, nevertheless, had
carried news of Lexington t