Had there been any _substantial_ misrepresentation on the part of Vancouver in respect to what Gray actually did discover, "a want of good faith" might have been reasonably imputed to him. Happily, however, for Vancouver's memory, the extract from the log-book of the Columbia bears out all the facts which Lieutenant Broughton alleges as to the extent of Gray's researches. "From this point," the latter says, alluding to a remarkable projecting point on the southern side, appearing like an island, a little above Point George, to which the name of Tongue Point was given, "was seen the centre of a deep bay, lying at the distance of seven miles N. 26 E. This bay terminated the researches of Mr. Gray; and to commemorate his discovery, it was called after him, Gray's Bay." "In Mr. Gray's sketch," Broughton further informs us, "an anchor was placed in this bay," so that he does not attempt in any way to misrepresent the locality of the spot where Gray's researches terminated. Lieutenant Broughton certainly denies the correctness of the sketch in respect to the distance of this bay from the entrance of the river. "It was not more," he writes, "than fifteen miles from Cape Disappointment, though according to the sketch it measures thirty-six miles." But the log-book itself confirms approximatively Lieutenant Broughton's statement, for it makes the distance of the spot where Gray brought up his vessel to be about twenty-two or twenty-five miles from the entrance between the bars, and Cape Disappointment is six miles distant from the entrance, so that there must have been an error in the sketch, if we admit the accuracy of the log-book.
The result of this inquiry seems fully to warrant the position which the British commissioners insisted on in 1826-7, that the discovery of the Columbia river was _a progressive discovery_. Heceta made the first step in 1775, when he discovered the bay, and concluded that "the place was the mouth of some great river, or of some passage to another sea;" but Heceta's report was not made public by the Spanish authorities. Meares, in 1788, confirmed Heceta's discovery of the bay, but impugned the correctness of the Spanish charts, as to there being a river there with a good port; his Voyages were published in London in 1790. Vancouver, having seen Meares' account before he left England, examined the bay in April 1792, and at that time came to the conclusion that, though there was river-coloured water in the bay, yet the opening was not worthy of attention, as being inaccessible to vessels of the same burden as the Discovery: his account was published in 1798. Gray, in the May following, after having on a former occasion beat about in the bay for nine days ineffectually, succeeded on his second visit in passing the bar, and explored the estuary for more than twenty miles: the extract of his log-book, which relates the particulars, was not made public before 1816. Lieutenant Broughton in the same year may be considered to have completed the discovery of the river, by ascending it for more than eighty miles above the limits of Gray's researches, almost to the foot of the Cascades, where the tide ceases to be felt: the particulars of this expedition were published in the 2nd vol. of Vancouver's Voyage, in 1798.