That So Large A River As The Columbia, Making A Telling Current So Far
From Shore, Should Remain Undiscovered While
One exploring expedition
after another sailed past seems remarkable, even after due allowance
is made for the cloudy weather that
Prevails hereabouts and the broad
fence of breakers drawn across the bar. During the last few
centuries, when the maps of the world were in great part blank, the
search for new worlds was fashionable business, and when such large
game was no longer to be found, islands lying unclaimed in the great
oceans, inhabited by useful and profitable people to be converted or
enslaved, became attractive objects; also new ways to India, seas,
straits, El Dorados, fountains of youth, and rivers that flowed over
golden sands.
Those early explorers and adventurers were mostly brave, enterprising,
and, after their fashion, pious men. In their clumsy sailing vessels
they dared to go where no chart or lighthouse showed the way, where
the set of the currents, the location of sunken outlying rocks and
shoals, were all unknown, facing fate and weather, undaunted however
dark the signs, heaving the lead and thrashing the men to their duty
and trusting to Providence. When a new shore was found on which they
could land, they said their prayers with superb audacity, fought the
natives if they cared to fight, erected crosses, and took possession
in the names of their sovereigns, establishing claims, such as they
were, to everything in sight and beyond, to be quarreled for and
battled for, and passed from hand to hand in treaties and settlements
made during the intermissions of war.
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