Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/29

26 were sailing northward along the wertem coast. He landed at Point Grenville near the straits of Fuca, and there planted the Spanish flag. "Soon afterward his crew was so thinned by scurvy that the 'Santiago' turned homeward." On the 17th day of August while Heceta was on his return voyage, he saw the mouth of the "River of the West," which he mistook for a bay or inlet. But for this mistake Heceta probably would have crossed the bar at die mouth of die river, in which case die Spanish flag would have been the first to float over the river now called the Columbia.

Cuadra Explores Northward to Russian Territory. Although the "Santiago" commanded by Heceta sailed southward, the "Sonora" commanded by Cuadra, sailed to the north, whereupon the Captain discovered Mt. San Jacinto (Mt. Edgecombe), a snow peak in latitude 57°. He continued his voyage northward to latitude 58°, but decided to proceed no further, inasmuch as the Russians claimed the coast north of latitude 60° by right of discovery.

Monacht Ape'. It will be borne in mind that some of the explorations along the Pacific Coast were stimulated by stories recited by Indians who had visited various parts of the country, then unknown to white people. There were Indians in the Mississippi valley who had visited the Pacific coast and related their adventures to seamen, missionaries and others who published accounts of these adventures in Europe and America. H. H. Bancroft quotes the French explorer M. le Page du Pratz concerning Monacht Ape' an intelligent Yazoo Indian who traveled from the Mississippi to the Atlantic and thence to the Pacific Ocean. The French Savant regarded this Indian as a philosopher, and quoted many of his utterances. The following, which was inspired by the sight of the Atlantic Ocean, is one of them: "When I first saw it I was so delighted that I could not speak; my eyes were too small for my soul's ease. The ________