iles, and dropped anchor on the left bank, at the opening
of a deep bay. There he made a map or rough sketch of what he had seen
of this river (accompanied by a written description of the soundings,
bearings, &c.); and having finished his traffic with the natives (the
object of his voyage to these parts), he put out to sea, and soon after
fell in with Captain Vancouver, who was cruising by order of the British
government, to seek new discoveries. Mr. Gray acquainted him with the
one he had just made, and even gave him a copy of the chart he had drawn
up. Vancouver, who had just driven off a colony of Spaniards established
on the coast, under the command of Senor Quadra (England and Spain being
then at war), despatched his first-lieutenant Broughton, who ascended
the river in boats some one hundred and twenty or one hundred and fifty
miles, took possession of the country in the name of his Britannic
majesty, giving the river the name of the _Columbia_, and to the bay
where the American captain stopped, that of _Gray's bay_. Since that
period the country had been seldom visited (till 1811), and chiefly by
American ships.

Sir Alexander McKenzie, in his second overland voyage, tried to reach
the western ocean by the Columbia river, and thought he had succeeded
when he came out six degrees farther north, at the bottom of Puget's
sound, by another river.[A] In 1805, the American government sent
Captains Lewis and Clark, with about thirty men, including some Kentucky
hunters, on an overland journey to the mouth of the Columbia. They
ascended the Missouri, crossed the mountains at the source of that
river, and following the course of the Columbia, reached the shores of
the Pacific, where they were forced to winter. The report which they
made of their expedition to the United States government created a
lively sensation.[B]

[Footnote A: McKenzie's Travels.]

[Footnote B: Lewis and Clark's Report.]

Mr. John Jacob Astor, a New York merchant, who conducted almost alone
the trade in furs south of the great lakes Huron and Superior, and who
had acquired by that commerce a prodigious fortune, thought to augment
it by forming on the banks of the Columbia an establishment of which the
principal or supply factory should be at the mouth of that river. He
communicated his views to the agents of the Northwest Company; he was
even desirous of forming the proposed establishment in concert with
them; but after some negotiations, the inl