Navigators had been at work minutely examining the Pacific coast of the Wilderness,—La Perouse, Dixon, Meares, and others. Although Meares, for Great Britain, in 1788, searched for the Rio de San Roque as laid down on Spanish charts, according to Heceta's observations, and although he actually entered the bay where it disembogues, he departed without finding it, because the breakers were clearly seen by him to extend entirely across the shore end of the inlet. In consequence he applied to the place the title of Deception Bay, and the prominent headland just north of it he called by the name it still bears, Cape Disappointment. He declared positively that there was no such river as the San Roque, which illustrates the ease with which mistakes are made, even by men of intelligence. It was a fortunate error for the United States, as now neither the Spanish, who were still clinging to the northern coasts, nor the British, who were opposing them, had obtained any right of discovery in this great river. No captain as yet had possessed the insight, or the courage, or the resources, to dash through the formidable line of fierce combers and open the mouth of the Columbia to the world. But its day was soon to arrive. The same year that Meares in disappointment turned his prow away from the entrance, an American merchant captain, Robert Gray, of Boston, in his trading vessel, the _Washington_, had nearly foundered in trying to force the passage. After this Gray exchanged ships with Kendrick, a captain in the service of the same company, and in the _Columbia_ made a trip to China and then home. Kendrick, meanwhile, with the _Washington_, put into the Strait of Fuca and pretty well examined this body of water, which Gray before him had entered to the distance of fifty miles. [Illustration: Mouth of the Columbia from Astoria. Cape Disappointment Left Distance. From _The Trail of Lewis and Clark_. O. D. Wheeler.]