Vancouver visited the river, and his lieutenant, Broughton,
explored it by the aid of Captain Gray's chart; ascending it upwards of
one hundred miles, until within view of a snowy mountain, to which he
gave the name of Mt. Hood, which it still retains.
The existence of this river, however, was known long before the visits
of Gray and Vancouver, but the information concerning it was vague and
indefinite, being gathered from the reports of Indians. It was spoken
of by travellers as the Oregon, and as the Great River of the West. A
Spanish ship is said to have been wrecked at the mouth, several of the
crew of which lived for some time among the natives. The Columbia,
however, is believed to be the first ship that made a regular discovery
and anchored within its waters, and it has since generally borne the
name of that vessel. As early as 1763, shortly after the acquisition of
the Canadas by Great Britain, Captain Jonathan Carver, who had been in
the British provincial army, projected a journey across the continent
between the forty-third and forty-sixth degrees of northern latitude
to the shores of the Pacific Ocean. His objects were to ascertain the
breadth of the continent at its broadest part, and to determine on some
place on the shores of the Pacific, where government might establish
a post to facilitate the discovery of a northwest passage, or a
communication between Hudson's Bay and the Pacific Ocean.
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