Page:The Columbia River - Its History, Its Myths, Its Scenery Its Commerce.djvu/221

Rh First and foremost was the discovery by Robert Gray of the River and his actual twenty-five-mile ascension of it in May, 1792. He had gone much farther than Heceta, who had only looked in, but he had not gone so far as Broughton. The latter indeed, claimed, and his government followed him in the claim, that Gray had not really been in the River at all, but was only in an estuary of the sea into which the River flowed. But that, to any one who has seen the River, is too much of a forced construction to stand serious examination. Moreover, Gray antedated Broughton by some months.

Turning from sea claims to land claims, England could point to Alexander Mackenzie as having crossed the continent in 1792, and as having reached the veritable ocean at Cascade Inlet. But it again was a very strained construction to extend that claim so far as to include the lower Columbia Valley. The United States could justly advance as a sufficient offset, the expedition of Lewis and Clark in 1804. In 1811 David Thompson had traversed the entire length of the Columbia for the British flag, only to find the Astor Company already established under the Stars and Stripes at the mouth of the River. From these essential facts out of many, we can easily draw the conclusion that no one of these three contestants could justly be too arrogant and exclusive. Some degree of modesty was befitting each.

We have already seen the rivalries of the great fur companies, the Hudson's Bay and the North-western of the British, and the Pacific of the Americans, and the effect of the War of 1812 on their fortunes. As a result of that war the Pacific Fur