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it and refers to it. But none of these three really investigated the matter or believed that any such stream existed. Indeed, Meares and Vancouver denied the possibility of it.

Gray’s discovery and naming of the Columbia—the Oregon of Carver and of Bryant—subsequently became a fact of the greatest consequence in the determination of the Northwestern boundary line between the United States and Great Britain. Important as this fact became, however, it was vastly enhanced by the exploration of Lewis and Clark which followed it so closely—with an interval of but thirteen years—and both were emphasized by the settlement of Astoria in 1812, while the whole matter was clinched by the treaty of 1819 between Spain and the United States, by which Spain transferred to the latter country all of her title, real or imaginary.