April 2 and May 7 is a
matter of guessing. Anyway, Captain George Vancouver sent out from
England to settle the dispute about Nootka, at six o'clock on the
morning of April 29, just off the wave-lashed rocks of Cape Flattery,
and within sight of Olympus's snowy sky-line, noticed a ship on the
offing carrying American colors. He sent Mr. Puget and Mr. Menzies to
inquire.

They brought back word that Gray "had been off the mouth of a river in
46 degrees 10 minutes where the outset and reflux was so strong as to
prevent entering for nine days," and that Gray had been fifty miles up
the Straits of Fuca.

Both facts were distasteful to Vancouver. He had wished to be the
first to explore the Straits of Fuca, and on only April 27, had passed
an opening which he pronounced inaccessible and not a river, certainly
not a river worthy of his attention. Yet the exact words of Captain
Bruno Heceta, the Spaniard, in 1775 were: "These currents . . . cause
me to believe that the place is the mouth of some great river. . . . I
did not enter and anchor there because . . . if we let go the anchor,
we had not enough men to get it up. (Thirty-five were down with
scurvy.) . . . At the distance of three or four leagues, I lay too. I
experienced heavy currents, which made it impossible to enter the {236}
bay, as I was far to leeward. . . . These currents, however, convince
me that a great quantity of water rushed from this bay on the ebb of
the tide."

So the Spaniard failed to enter, and now the great English navigator
went on his way, convinced there was no River of the West; but Robert
Gray headed back south determined to find what lay behind the
tremendous crash of breakers and sand bar. On the 7th of May, the
rowboat towed the _Columbia_ into what is now known as Gray's Harbor,
where he opened trade with the Indians, and was presently so boldly
overrun by them, that he was compelled to fire into their canoes,
killing seven. Putting out from this harbor on the 10th, he steered
south, keeping close ashore, and was rewarded at four o'clock on the
morning of the 11th by hearing a tide-rip like thunder and seeing an
ocean of waters crashing sheer over sand bar and reef with a cataract
of foam in midair from the drive of colliding waves. Milky waters
tinged the sea as of inland streams. Gray had found the river, but
could he enter? A gentle wind, straight as a die, was driving direct
ashore. Gray waited till the tide seemed to