display, since neither Kelley nor his readers could have had access to it without journeying across the Atlantic, and it is extremely doubtful if he had ever seen anything like it; though he may have believed, in the confused state of his intellect, that such a fact had been communicated to him.
In another place he remarks: 'After surveying the mouth of the Columbia I supposed the word Orejon to be of Portuguese derivation—Orejon, a fort. It seemed an appropriate name; the entrance of the river being well fortified by nature.' He also refers to the fact that Humboldt speaks of 'le mot Indian Origan,' and says, 'Humboldt was a particular observer and correct writer, and would not have called this word Indian without good authority.' But this is a statement as disingenuous as the first. In referring to Gray's
discovery of the Columbia Paver in 1792, Humboldt adds a note wherein he mentions a doubt thrown by Malte-Brun upon the identity of the Columbia with the Tacoutché-Tessé, or Orégan of Mackenzie, which illustrates how far great men may sometimes wander from the truth. Mackenzie in 1793, after the discovery and naming of the Columbia, having come overland from Canada, discovered a river, the Fraser, which he hoped and believed was the Columbia and which in his narrative he calls by that name, alternately using 'Tacoutche Tesse' and 'Great River' in his book; and having 'Tacoutche Tesse, or Columbia River,' engraved on his map. But that Mackenzie calls any river the Origan, or Oregon, is not true.
Humboldt's criticism on an unknown geographer, however, furnishes a key to the manner in which a merely speculative idea became perpetuated through a mistake in map-engraving, when he goes on to say that he does not know whether the Origan enters into the lake placed in 39° to 41° north latitude, or pierces the mountain chain to enter some little bay between Bodega and Cape Orford; but that he objects to the attempt of a geographer ordinarily learned and prudent, to identify Orégan with Origen, a name which the above-mentioned geographer erroneously believes to have been placed on the map of Antonio Alzate, Geog. Math. et Physique et Politic, tom. xv. 116–17; and he further explains that Alzate had placed the words 'cuyo origen se ignora' near the junction of the Gila and the Colorado, and that the words being separated by the engraver, the geographer whom he is criticising, not under-
