a river below Tongue Point: it was claimed that it was an inlet or sound. Were it not a fact patent to every one that a river must extend as far as the force of its current is felt, the pretence would still be perfectly transparent, since Gray must have passed Tongue Point, and been in what Broughton claimed to be the actual river before he grounded. Years afterwards, the log-book of the obscure Yankee trader, and the evidence of Comandante Quadra, overbore all strained pretences, and manifest destiny made Oregon and its great river a portion of the American republic.
Captain Robert Gray was the first man to carry the flag of the United States around the world, having, in the spring of 1792, just returned from a voyage from Nootka to Canton, and from Canton to Boston, by way of the Cape of Good Hope. He continued to command a trading vessel up to the time of his death, in 1809. Gray's Harbor, on the coast of Washington Territory, was discovered and named by him, the name remaining as a memorial. Ought he not to have some other?
In October, 1792, Vancouver having finished the survey of Puget Sound, in which the Spanish fleet was also engaged, Broughton was despatched to the Columbia River with the "Chatham," which grounded just inside Cape Hancock; was got off and anchored in a small bay on the north side of the river, known as Baker's Bay. In this cove he found, to his surprise, another vessel, the brig "Jenny," from Bristol, England, commanded by Captain Baker, from whom he had parted in Nootka Sound. The cove was thence named Baker's Bay. From this time the Columbia continued to be visited by trading vessels up to the war of 1812, which interrupted this sort of traffic for the time.
