Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 5.djvu/115

 descended the Kooskooskie braneh of Snake River, and followed the great water courses of the West, till on the 7th of November, 1805, the horizon of the Pacific Ocean burst upon the view between the two lines of breakers that marked the debouch of the great river into the great. Pacifie sea.

The country was already called "Oregon," though the name had as yet obtained very little currency. In Carver's Travels, published in London in 1778, the name had first appeared. The origin of the name is one of the enigmas of history. Carver professed to have received it from the Indians in the country of the Upper Mississippi, where he had been pushing his explorations. The Indians, he says, told him of the River Oregon, flowing to the Western Oeean; but how much of the tale was his own invention it is impossible to say. He had a geographical theory and was seeking confirmation of it; for the great breadth of the country was known from the general trend of the Pacific Northwest Coast line, and it was naturally believed that so great a country must contain a great river. Yet the Indians of the Upper Mississippi country could not have known anything about it. Carver hit upon the name "Oregon" in some way we never shall know. Jefferson used the word in his instructions to Lewis and Clark, showing that it was beginning to have a vogue before "Thanatopsis" was written; but it was Bryant's solemn poem, with its sonorous verse, which appeared in the year 1817, that familiarized the word "Oregon" and soon put it on every tongue. Various accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition had appeared both in the United States and Europe before the appearance of "Thanatopsis," but undoubtedly it was Bryant's expression, "Where rolls the Oregon," that did most to spread the name before the world.

The men of the Lewis and Clark expedition were the first Americans who came across the continent to the Oregon country and the Pacific Ocean. Alexander Mackenzie, twelve years earlier, had come from Canada, passing through the continent and over the mountains from Peace River, which flows into Athabasca Lake, and thence discharges its waters