which they have not thought proper to make public; no doubt to avoid
competition in a lucrative business.

In 1792, Captain Gray, commanding the ship Columbia of Boston,
discovered in latitude 46° 19" north, the entrance of a great bay on the
Pacific coast. He sailed into it, and having perceived that it was the
outlet or estuary of a large river, by the fresh water which he found
at a little distance from the entrance, he continued his course upward
some eighteen miles, and dropped anchor on the left bank, at the opening
of a deep bay. There he made a map or rough sketch of what he had seen
of this river (accompanied by a written description of the soundings,
bearings, &c.); and having finished his traffic with the natives (the
object of his voyage to these parts), he put out to sea, and soon after
fell in with Captain Vancouver, who was cruising by order of the British
government, to seek new discoveries. Mr. Gray acquainted him with the
one he had just made, and even gave him a copy of the chart he had drawn
up. Vancouver, who had just driven off a colony of Spaniards established
on the coast, under the command of Señor Quadra (England and Spain being
then at war), despatched his first-lieutenant Broughton, who ascended
the river in boats some one hundred and twenty or one hundred and fifty
miles, took possession of the country in the name of his Britannic
majesty, giving the river the name of the _Columbia_, and to the bay
where the American captain stopped, that of _Gray's bay_. Since that
period the country had been seldom visited (till 1811), and chiefly by
American ships.

Sir Alexander McKenzie, in his second overland voyage, tried to reach
the western ocean by the Columbia river, and thought he had succeeded
when he came out six degrees farther north, at the bottom of Puget's
sound, by another river.[A] In 1805, the American government sent