After a while, 1792, Gray came back to the north-west coast in the _Columbia_ and met at the Strait of Fuca the great English navigator Vancouver, who had been sent to make charts of the coast, a work which he carried out so admirably that it has been the basis for all charts ever since. Vancouver had already been in Deception Bay before meeting Gray, so that when the latter described the place he had tried to enter with the _Washington_, and stated his belief in the existence of a large river there, a belief perhaps increased by the statements of Jonathan Carver, he refused to believe. Vancouver had seen the breakers extending "two or three miles into the ocean," and though he noticed that the sea there changed to river water he thought it only from some minor stream, and did not consider the subject of any importance. So, like Meares, he had turned his back upon it, and now he went on to survey Puget Sound. Gray, however, was of a different mind, and he determined to return to the place to explore. It almost seems, indeed, that Fate had appointed this discovery for him. When he arrived there he did not hesitate, but prepared his ship for the passage, and at eight A.M. May 11, 1792, he ran in "east-north-east between the breakers, having from five to seven fathoms of water. When we were over the bar we found this to be a large river of fresh water, up which we steered." Thus, in spite of everything and with no effort or desire to do it, the United States had acquired by right of discovery a claim on this far-away country. The matter, which at the time was little thought of, proved afterwards of considerable value. When Gray sailed out of the river, which he was able to accomplish only after several attempts, he gave to the river the name of his ship—Columbia. For some years the name of Oregon, by which Carver had described it as he heard the account from the natives, was also applied, as well as the other title—River of the West,—but all at length gave way before the name bestowed by the discoverer, whose action in running the bar was all the more praiseworthy since other skilful navigators had failed to fathom the secret of Deception Bay. The following year Mackenzie arrived on the coast, just after Vancouver had passed north in pursuing his excellent survey. Thus little by little the white man was permanently closing in on the great central Wilderness. In 1792-93 Todd, a Scotchman with a special grant from Spain, made several journeys from St. Louis up the Missouri, and Fidler, in the employ of the North-west Company, travelled from Fort Buckingham on the Saskatchewan south-west to the foot of the Rocky Mountains and down through regions drained by the Missouri. Dorion, afterwards with Lewis and Clark, had lived with the Sioux since 1784 or earlier, and there were many others like him.