the voyage to it by Captain Cook some years previous. The surveys conducted by Captain Vancouver were elaborate and scientific. He, too, like those who had gone before him, was looking for the "River of the West," or the North-west Passage.
But that obtuseness of perception, which sometimes overtakes the most sharp-sighted, overtook Captain Vancouver when his vessel passed the legendary river; for it was broad daylight and clear weather, so that he saw the headlands, and still he declared that there was no river there—only a sort of a bay.
Fortunately, a sharper eye than his had scanned the same opening not long before: the eye of one of that proverbially sharp nation, the Yankee. Captain Robert Gray, sailing a vessel in the employ of a firm of Boston traders, in taking a look at the inlet, and noticing the color of the water, did think there was a river there, and so told the English Captain when his vessel was spoken. Finding that his impressions were treated with superior skepticism, the Yankee Captain turned back to take another look. This second observation was conclusive. He sailed in on the 11th of May, 1792.
From the log-book of the Columbia, Captain Gray's ship, we take the following extracts: At four o'clock, on the morning of the 11th, "beheld our desired port, bearing east-south-east, distant six leagues. At eight A.M., being a little to the windward of the entrance of the harbor, bore away, and ran in east-north-east, between the breakers, having from five to seven fathoms of water. When we were over the bar, we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered. Many canoes came alongside. At one p.m., came to, with the small bower, in ten fathoms; black and white
