Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 18.djvu/265

 In its final twenty-five mile stretch the deep water channel of the river crosses obliquely from Harrington Point on the north side to Tongue Point on the south side, and then along t^ Astoria and Point Adams and into the ocean close to the end of the South Jetty. But until later than 1880 Baker's Bay was the anchorage for all shipping and the channel turned across the river at Point Adams, leaving Desdemona Sands Light to the starboard, and then turned west into that bay. Deep sea vessels came in across the bar by either a south or a north channel and passed close under the headland of Canby Light into the bay. But at the present time it is impossible for even the power boat of the Canby Life Saving Station to pass from Bdcer's Bay directly into the deep water channel at certain stages of summer tides. Sand Island, which now lies southeast of the cape and the bay, formerly was on the south side of the deep water channel and was connected at very low water with Point Adams, and for this reason Sand Island is still a political part of the State of Oregon, but is gradually becoming connected physically with Cape Disappointment.

It happens that although the course of exploration and discovery in the Pacific Ocean was from the south northward, the earliest known approach to the mouth of the Columbia was from the north. This was due to the fact that the harbor first charted on the North Pacific coast was at Nootka, Vancouver Island, and for many years all sea captains gathered there and exchanged the latest information as to new discoveries, etc.

Commander Bruno Heceta, a Spaniard, was the first navigator to make the acquaintance of the Columbia River bar. In the summer of 1775, in a ship-rigged frigate named the Santiago, which normally carried more than eighty officers and men—tonnage unknown— had been north as far as Vancouver Island and was returning toward Mexico, the crew much depleted by scurvy. Of the 17th of August of that year Heceta has left this record: "On the evening of this day I discovered a large bay, to which I gave the name 'Assumption Bay.' * * * Having arrived opposite this bay at six in the evening and