A short time before Heceta's discovery, Captain Jonathan Carver of Connecticut set out on an exploring tour, partly for the purpose of determining the width of the continent and the nature of the Indian inhabitants. He mentions four great rivers rising within a few leagues of one another, "The river Bourbon (Red River of the North) which empties itself into Hudson's Bay, the waters of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the river Oregon, or River of the West, that falls into the Pacific Ocean at the Straits of Anian." Carver's descriptions are fanciful, and it is not likely that he ever saw the river which is now known as the Columbia, although there is a possibility that he heard stories from the Indians of a great river upon the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, and invented for it the name Oregon.
In 1787 Meares, an English trader, visited the coast, and sailing southward from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, attempted to find the river San Roque as it was laid down upon the Spanish charts. Reaching the proper latitude, Meares rounded a promontory and found behind it a bay which he was unable to enter because of a continuous line of breakers extending across it. He became satisfied that there was no such river as the San Roque, and named the promontory Cape Disappointment and the bay Deception Bay. If Meares had entered the bay through the breakers, the English would undoubtedly have made good their claim to the discovery of the Columbia River.
After the Revolution, American trading ships began to extend their operations into the North Pacific. In 1787 two such vessels left Boston, one of them under command of a Captain Gray. After reaching the Pacific, the ships were parted during a storm, and Captain Gray finally touched the American coast near the forty-sixth degree of north latitude. For nine days he tried to enter an opening which was in all probability the one attempted by Meares. After nearly losing his ship and suffering an Indian attack, he sailed north to Nootka Sound.
Captain Gray returned to Boston, but in 1790 started upon another trading expedition in command of the ship _Columbia_. Arriving safely in the North Pacific, he spent the winter of 1791-1792 upon Vancouver Island.