At three-quarters past two, a fresh wind came in from seaward; we immediately came to sail and beat over the bar, having from five to seven fathoms water in the channel. At five p.m., we were out, clear of all the bars, and in twenty fathoms water."
Captain Gray proceeded from Columbia's River to Nootka Sound, a favorite harbor for trading vessels, but in dispute at that time between Spain and Great Britain. Here he reported his discovery to the Spanish Comandante, Quadra, and gave him a copy of his charts. In the controversy which afterward happened between Great Britain and the United States, concerning the title to the Oregon territory, the value of this precaution became apparent: for in that controversy the Comandante's evidence destroyed the pretensions of Vancouver's lieutenant, Broughton, who, on having heard of Gray's discovery, returned to the Columbia River, and made a survey of it up as far as the mouth of the "Wallamet, founding upon this survey the claim of Great Britain to a discovery-title. The subterfuge was resorted to of denying that the Columbia was a river below Tongue Point; but it was claimed that it was an inlet or sound. Were it not a fact patent to every one, that a river must extend as far as the force of its current is felt, the pretense would still be perfectly transparent, since Gray must have passed Tongue Point, and been in what Broughton claimed to be the actual river before he grounded. Years afterward, the log-book of the obscure Yankee trader, and the evidence of Comandante Quadra, overbore all strained pretenses, and manifest destiny made Oregon and its great river a portion of the American Republic.
Captain Robert Gray was the first man to carry the flag of the United States around the world, having,
