Page:Manifest Destiny in the West.pdf/2

1869.] some power more beloved than Great Britain by the Spanish heart.

However that may have been, one of the high contracting parties to the beforementioned treaty evidently regarded the agreement more as a matter of courtesy than fact. The British Exploring Expedition, under Vancouver, had made too many pleasing observations on the west coast, and along the picturesque shores of the great inlet named Puget Sound, after one of Vancouver's lieutenants, to cherish a very impressive regard for the sacredness of the contract. On the contrary, Vancouver continued to amuse himself for months with "taking possession" of various points along the coast of what is now United States territory, and in rechristening islands, mountains, capes, and rivers, which were already known and named by the Spaniards.

But the "cloud no bigger than a man's hand," which was to overshadow the heaven of promise then shining on Vancouver, had already appeared. Among the vessels of different nationalities then resorting to the north-west coast to trade with the Indians for furs, which were taken thence to China, were a number of American vessels, owned, some of them, in New York, but chiefly the property of a Boston company. These Yankee traders were the objects of peculiar contempt to the English companies in the same trade, because, as their officers represented, the American captains were unacquainted with the science of navigation which should lead to distinction in discovery, and otherwise inferior as officers and gentlemen. Instead of doing business in grand style, like the English companies, these American captains were guilty of gathering up at the islands on their route aulone shells, sandal-wood, and other trifles, for which they had contrived to make a market in China, and which they sold, in addition to their furs, for cargoes of teas and silks, to be conveyed in their turn to Boston—thus realizing a double profit.

It does not appear that the complaints or criticisms of the British officers had any effect in deterring these trading Yankee captains from the pursuit of gain in their own fashion. Certain it is that their industry and enterprise helped materially to advance the national commerce at a period when that commerce had but just begun to recover from the crushing effects of the Revolutionary War.

It is probable enough that Vancouver shared the prejudices of the English captains against the Bostonians. However that may be, he made the singular mistake of sailing in broad daylight, of a fine May day, directly past the mouth of that great, mystical river which under the name of San Roque was known to, although unexplored by, the Spanish navigators; was spoken of by other navigators, who only guessed its existence, as the "River of the West;" and which had acquired, in some other unknown way, on the other side of the continent, the name of "Oregon."

The reality of this much talked-of river, which it was hoped would open communication for ships with Hudson's Bay and the North Atlantic, was one of the things Vancouver wished particularly to prove or to disprove. Not so was it written in the book of Fate. As we have said, he sailed past it in fair daylight, with his eyes on it, and pronounced the opening in the coast to be only an inlet; into which, if a river flowed, it was of no importance. But he did not know that a few days previous, one of those Boston vessels so obnoxious to British ideas had sailed past that same opening under similarly favorable circumstances; and the captain had formed an opinion of it so different from that Vancouver entertained that he could not get the matter out of his mind. Discovery was not the business he followed. He was no leader