Having triumphed over France, Great Britain in 1763 acquired the whole of Canada, all of Louisiana east of the Mississippi except New Orleans, and the Spanish claims in Florida. They now controlled the entire continent east of the Mississippi, the Dutch having long before surrendered. France published the next year a secret cession two years before of all Louisiana west of the Mississippi to Spain, and Spain obtaining New Orleans also in 1769, France was thrown completely off the continent. In 1764, at the time France announced the cession to Spain, La Clede founded St. Louis on the site where it now stands, a settlement that henceforth became the departing point for the great Wilderness. Great Britain renounced all claim to lands south-west of the Mississippi, and the vast territory of North America was now divided between Great Britain, Spain, and Russia, the latter on the north-west, Spain on the south-west, and Great Britain on the east. Spain was endeavouring to clinch its hold on the Californian coast and the regions to northward, and several vessels were sent out in that direction. One of these, commanded by Bruno Heceta, returning from more northern shores on the evening of August 17, 1775, came to a great bay where a current was discovered setting out from the land with such power that Heceta thought he had found either some great river or some connection with another sea. The Strait of Fuca was then supposed to join the Atlantic, under the old title of the fabled Strait of Anian, and he also thought he might be at the mouth of this, although his reckoning did not agree with that of Fuca. In reality he had discovered thus vaguely the mouth of the River of the West, now the Columbia. He called the place the Bahia de la Asuncion, but later charts mark it the Inlet of Heceta, while the supposed river is put down as Rio de San Roque. Aguilar, who commanded one of Vizcaino's ships in 1603, went north of Cape Mendocino to the mouth of a great river, which he could not enter on account of the current. This was probably the Columbia. Thus from sea and land the existence of a large river in this quarter began to be understood. Owing to the line of fierce white-caps formed by the tides breaking on the great bar, extending across the mouth of this river, even now, as one views the entrance from the deck of his approaching ship, after government execution of a large amount of admirable engineering, it presents a most impracticable looking channel, the white foam appearing to form a continuous line. At low water, with a sea running, the place is still one of difficult passage, and reminds of Gray, the bold sailor who first steered through it. Heceta, however, did not hesitate from timidity, he was a Spaniard, but his officers dissuaded him from making an attempt to enter on account of their unfit condition.