As China Was The Grand Mart For The Furs Collected In These
Quarters, The Russians Had The Advantage Over Their Competitors
In The Trade.
The latter had to take their peltries to Canton,
which, however, was a mere receiving mart, from whence they had
to be distributed over the interior of the empire and sent to the
northern parts, where there was the chief consumption.
The
Russians, on the contrary, carried their furs, by a shorter
voyage, directly to the northern parts of the Chinese empire;
thus being able to afford them in the market without the
additional cost of internal transportation.
We come now to the immediate field of operation of the great
enterprise we have undertaken to illustrate.
Among the American ships which traded along the northwest coast
in 1792, was the Columbia, Captain Gray, of Boston. In the course
of her voyage she discovered the mouth of a large river in lat.
46 19' north. Entering it with some difficulty, on account of
sand-bars and breakers, she came to anchor in a spacious bay. A
boat was well manned, and sent on shore to a village on the
beach, but all the inhabitants fled excepting the aged and
infirm. The kind manner in which these were treated, and the
presents given them, gradually lured back the others, and a
friendly intercourse took place. They had never seen a ship or a
white man. When they had first descried the Columbia, they had
supposed it a floating island; then some monster of the deep; but
when they saw the boat putting for shore with human beings on
board, they considered them cannibals sent by the Great Spirit to
ravage the country and devour the inhabitants. Captain Gray did
not ascend the river farther than the bay in question, which
continues to bear his name. After putting to sea, he fell in with
the celebrated discoverer, Vancouver, and informed him of his
discovery, furnished him with a chart which he had made of the
river. 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.
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