Page:History of Oregon volume 1.djvu/635

584 oration was delivered by W. G. T'Vault, after which a barbecue and public dinner were served, followed, not by a ball, but by a sermon, as was considered proper in a missionary town, delivered by Harvey Clark.

It had been a subject of annoyance to the colonists that two well-equipped British men-of-war should be stationed in Oregon waters, and that while a fleet of American vessels sported in the Pacific, not one was in the Columbia. But this grievance was removed when there entered on the 18th of July the schooner Shark, twelve guns, Neil M. Howison, commander, which had been repairing at the Islands since the month of April, and left Honolulu on the 23d of June. Reaching the mouth of the Columbia, she anchored, and fired guns signalling for a pilot, but no pilot appearing, Lieutenant Howison, with the master, pulled in between the breakers and sounded the channel, after which he brought the vessel in. On rounding Cape Disappointment he was hailed by a boat which contained A. L. Lovejoy, H. H. Spalding, and W. H. Gray. The negro pilot, already mentioned, was recommended, but in twenty minutes he ran the schooner hard aground on Chinook shoal. Lovejoy and Gray immediately put off to Astoria for assistance, and in the morning Mr Latta, the pilot of the Hudson's Bay Company, was brought on board, who took the Shark to her anchorage off Astoria, the vessel having worked off the sands during the night. Howison then proceeded with his ship to Vancouver, where he was received July 24th with the utmost cordiality by the officers of the Modeste and the fort. On the 26th he made an attempt to cross the bar at the mouth of the Willamette, with the intention of as-