Page:The Northwest Coast; Or, Three Years' Residence In Washington Territory.djvu/34

 20 ==== CHAPTER II. ====

Discovery of Shoal-water Bay by Meares in 1788.— His Description of it. — Indians come out of the Bay in a Canoe. — Thick Fog. — Meares's Long-boat Expedition to the Bay. — Attack by Indians. — Vancou- ver's Description.— Alden's Survey.— First Settlers.— Description of Shoal-water Bay.

lies north of the Columbia River, between Capes Shoal-water and Disappointment. Cape Disappointment is in latitude 46° 16^ north, and longitude 124° 01' west from Greenwich. And Toke's Point, or the extreme northwest point of Cape Shoal-water, and the northern shore at the entrance of Shoal-water Bay, is in latitude 46° 43^ north, and longitude 124° 02" west, making the distance from the entrance of the Columbia Eiver to that of Shoal-water Bay twenty-seven miles.

Cape Shoal-water and Shoal-water Bay were discovered by Lieutenant John Meares, commanding the East India Company's Ship Felice, of London, on Saturday, July 5th, 1788. Meares, who had been to Nootka, and other trading-posts north, for the purpose of collecting furs, had left a part of his company to build a small schooner, and was proceeding to the south to explore the great river discovered by the Spanish navigator Heceta on the 15th of August, 1775, and named by him Rio de San Roque, or River of St. Roc, and which was afterward entered by Captain Robert Gray, in the ship Columbia, of Boston, in 1792, and named by him the Columbia, Meares writes, "At noon our latitude was 47° 01' north, and the lofty mountains seen the preceding day bore east-northeast distant seven leagues. Our dis-