Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/220

180 As we have seen, the many-named river, and the fact that it was the key to a vast region and that the shores of the ocean contiguous to it seemed to abound in the finest of furs, was a lure to Portuguese, Frenchman, Russian, Spaniard, Englishman, and American. The first three became early eliminated from the conflict, and the last three fought the triangular battle to its ending with the final result that Uncle Sam inserted his broad shoulders between Mexico and the 49th parallel, and thus controls the choicest land of the sunset slope of the continent.

Spain, England, and the United States each had a valid claim to Oregon. Spain, by the partial discovery of the River by Heceta in 1775, by the voyages of Bodega and Arteaga in the same year and again in 1779, and by the voyage of Valdez and Galiano around Vancouver Island in 1792, together with many other voyages of a less definite nature by illustrious navigators, as Malaspina, Bustamente, Elisa, and others, had a strong position. Yet she had failed to clinch her discoveries or to take effective possession.

Great Britain could point to the elaborate examinations of Cook and Vancouver. The latter had made a minute investigation of the noble group of waters whose outlet preserves the name of the old Greek pilot of Cephalonia, Juan de Fuca; and his Lieutenant Broughton had entered the Columbia River and proceeded over a hundred miles up the stream. The nomenclature given to both the River and the Sound regions by Vancouver had been the first in any sense complete. So England, too, had a strong claim.

And what were the claims of the United States!