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. This place he presumed would be somewhere
about the Straits of Annian, at which point he supposed the
Oregon disembogued itself. It was his opinion, also, that a
settlement on this extremity of America would disclose new
sources of trade, promote many useful discoveries, and open a
more direct communication with China and the English settlements
in the East Indies, than that by the Cape of Good Hope or the
Straits of Magellan. * This enterprising and intrepid traveller
was twice baffled in individual efforts to accomplish this great
journey. In 1774, he was joined in the scheme by Richard
Whitworth, a member of Parliament, and a man of wealth. Their
enterprise was projected on a broad and bold plan. They were to
take with them fifty or sixty men, artificers and mariners.
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