Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 21.djvu/336



324 JOHN E. REES

River of the West (as I hinted in my introduction) have their sources in the same neighborhood. The waters of the three former are within thirty miles of each other; the latter, how- ever, is rather further west." Bancroft says, "Substitute for the St. Lawrence the Colorado, which makes the observation all the more striking, and the statement is essentially correct." 15 "This shews that these parts are the highest lands in North America; and it is an instance not to be paralleled on the other three quarters of the globe, that four rivers of such magnitude should take their rise together, and each, after run- ning separate courses, discharge their waters into different oceans at the distance of two thousand miles from their sources". 16

Such was some of the information which Captain Carver obtained concerning the West which we find is so manifest as to be substantially correct. It was given to him by the Sioux who, no doubt, acquired it from the Shoshonis. Some authors have endeavored to discredit the captain's writings while others have designated them a paraphrase upon the efforts of others 17 but the information which he imparts concerning this western country indicates that it came from some one who knew from experience of which he spoke. It may be that others helped to put his manuscript into readable book form as his papers were prepared for the press by a bookseller, 18 but the captain un- questionably furnished the historical data which the Indians had imparted to him. After returning from his travels he proceeded to London where he proposed to the parliament of the British government the plan of ascending the Missouri and descending the Columbia and building posts along the route to facilitate the Indian fur trade and colonial settlements, 19 but England, in neglecting support of Captain Carver's scheme, overlooked her supreme opportunity to entirely dominate the North American continent as did France, a century before, lose her undoubted future prestige by her shameful treatment of Pierre Radisson.

Captain Carver was the first white person known to use the


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15 Bancroft's Northwest Coast, I, 608.

16 Carver's Travels, 54-5.

17 Eleventh Edition, Encyclopaedia Britannica, V. 437.

18 Carver's Travels, 22.

19 Ibid., 18 and 280.