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Both Americans were surprised to learn that half a dozen navigators had already gone as far north as Nootka Sound. Perez, Heceta, Quadra all had coasted Vancouver Island for Spain from 1774 to 1779, and so had La Pérouse, the French explorer, in 1787. Hanna had come out from China for furs in 1785.
Besides, in 1775, Heceta, the Spanish navigator from Monterey, had drifted close to this coast with a crew so stricken with scurvy not a man could hoist anchor or reef sails. Heceta thought he saw the entrance to a river; but was unable to come within twenty miles of the opening to verify his supposition.
Without a doubt, if the river existed at all, it was down behind that Cape Disappointment where Meares had failed to go in, and Heceta been driven back. Just what Gray did between April 2 and May 7 is a matter of guessing.
From Seattle to Fort Colville. Crossing the Columbia River Bar. The River and its Surroundings. Its Former Magnitude. The Grande Coulée. Early Explorers, Heceta, Meares, Vancouver, Grey. Curious Burial-Place. Chinese Miners. Umatilla. Walla Walla. Sage-Brush and Bunch-Grass. Flowers in the Desert. "Stick" Indians. Klickatats. Spokane Indian. Snakes. Dead Chiefs. A Kamas-Field. Basaltic Rocks.
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.
To return now to the Spanish explorations, in the latter part of the seventeenth century we find that Heceta, following the first expedition, succeeded in getting as far as Vancouver Island, where, having been parted from an accompanying ship by a storm, he turned southward, passing the Strait of Juan de Fuca and keeping close by the shore.
As we have seen, Bruno Heceta, acting for Spain, was the first mariner to sight the Columbia, and the American, Robert Gray, was the first to enter its mouth, thus proving Heceta's conjecture of a great river.
Spain was still dreaming of the Pacific being 'a closed sea. She took cognizance of Bering's exploits to the north, but she at once strove to checkmate an advance south from the north, by herself advancing north from the south. It was in 1775 that Heceta had observed the turbid entrance to a great river and the opening to a strait that might be that of Juan de Fuca.
When Heceta and Bodega in 1775 were searching the coast for harbors, they anchored under the lee of the next northerly headland. After the pious manner of the time, having left San Blas on Trinity Sunday, they named their haven Trinidad. Their arrival was six days before the battle of Bunker Hill. It is about forty-five miles from Cape Mendocino to Trinidad.
In spite of the difficulties and dangers it presented, Gray determined to make another effort to find the river which old Bruno Heceta had sighted in 1775. And early in April, after sending his mate north on the little vessel Adventure to trade, Gray sailed away south on the Columbia. Let us leave him for the present stealing furtively along the coast from Cape Flattery to Cape Disappointment.
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