h, round the
Cape of Good Hope, and keeping on toward the west he reached Boston
in the summer of 1790. He had been gone about three years, and he
was the first man who carried the American flag clear round the globe.

[Illustration: A SEA-OTTER.]

[Footnote 1: Vancouver (Van-koo'ver): part of it is seen north of
Portland, Or., paragraph 234.]

[Footnote 2: He commanded the _Lady Washington_ at first, and
afterward the _Columbia_.]

[Footnote 3: Tiverton, Rhode Island.]

234. Captain Gray's second voyage to the Pacific coast; he enters
a great river and names it the Columbia; the United States claims
the Oregon country; we get Oregon in 1846.--Captain Gray did not stay
long at Boston, for he sailed again that autumn in the _Columbia_
for the Pacific coast, to buy more furs. He stayed on that coast a
long time. In the spring of 1792 he entered a great river and sailed
up it a distance of nearly thirty miles. He seems to have been the
first white man who had ever actually entered it. He named the vast
stream the Columbia River, from the name of his vessel. It is the
largest American river which empties into the Pacific Ocean south
of Alaska.[4]

[Illustration: CAPTAIN GRAY EXPLORING THE COLUMBIA RIVER, OREGON.]

Captain Gray returned to Boston and gave an account of his voyage
of exploration; this led Congress to claim the country through which
the Columbia flows[5] as part of the United States.

[Illustration: MOUNT HOOD, OREGON.]

After Captain Gray had been dead for forty years we came into
possession, in 1846, of the immense territory then called the Oregon
Country. It was through what he had done that we got our first claim
to that country which now forms the states of Oregon and Washington.

[Illustration: Map showing the extent of the United States after we
added the Oregon Country in 1846.]

[Illustration: EMIGRANTS ON THEIR WAY TO OREGON FIFTY YEARS AGO.]

[Footnote 4: The Yukon River in Alaska is larger than the Columbia.]

[Footnote 5: The discovery and exploration of a river usually gives
the right to a claim to the country watered by that river, on the
part of the nation to which the discoverer or explorer belongs.]

235. Summary.--A little over a hundred years ago (1790) Captain
Robert Gray of Rhode Island first carried the American flag round
the world. In 1792 he entered and named the Columbia River. Because
he did that the United States claimed the country--called the Oregon
Country-