he strait which now bears his name.

For many years the attempt to discover a passage around the northern
part of America engaged the early navigators upon both the Atlantic
and Pacific oceans. Their desire to find an easy route to India
spurred them to constant effort. For a time it was believed that
such an opening actually existed, and mariners went so far as to give
it a name, calling it the Straits of Anian. The reputed discoveries
of Juan de Fuca materially strengthened the general belief in a
passage to the northward of America.

Vizcaino, in his voyage of 1603, reached latitude 43 deg. north and
thought that he had discovered a great river flowing into the Pacific
Ocean. This opening, although south of the point supposed to have
been reached by Juan de Fuca, was believed for a time to be the
entrance to the long-sought Straits of Anian. During the latter
part of the seventeenth century California was represented upon
the Spanish maps as an island having Cape Blanco, which Vizcaino
discovered and named, as its northern point, and separated from
the mainland by an extension of the Gulf of California northward.

To return now to the Spanish explorations, in the latter part of
the seventeenth century we find that Heceta, following the first
expedition, succeeded in getting as far as Vancouver Island, where,
having been parted from an accompanying ship by a storm, he turned
southward, passing the Strait of Juan de Fuca and keeping close by
the shore. In latitude 46 deg. 17' he found an opening in the coast from
which a strong current issued. He felt sure that he had discovered
the mouth of some large river. Upon the later Spanish maps this
was called Heceta's Inlet, or River of San Roque. A glance at the
map will show how closely the latitude given corresponds to the
mouth of the river which was discovered later by Captain Gray and
named, after his ship, the Columbia.

A short time before Heceta's discovery, Captain Jonathan Carver of
Connecticut set out on an exploring tour, partly for the purpose
of determining the width of the continent and the nature of the
Indian inhabitants. He mentions four great rivers rising within
a few leagues of one another, "The river Bourbon (Red River of
the North) which empties itself into Hudson's Bay, the waters of
the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the river Oregon, or River
of the West, that falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Straits of
Anian." Carver's descriptions are