this information there was a sort of gold mine stampede to the new found El Dorado in the fur bearing haunts of the north Pacific, which set in toward the The settlement of Old Oregon, consisting of all the United States territory west of the Rocky mountains, north of California, being the result of a long series of explorations by sea and land covering three hundred years from 1506 to 1806, is an interesting and necessary chapter to any history of the city of Portland. The settlement of this last and then most distant portion of the United States was the result of a world-wide racial impulse to move westward on isothermal lines, supported by the American spirit to go west, take possession of new lands and colonize the North American continent. That impulse and that spirit lias never halted or slept since the united colonies repudiated George the III at Bunker's Hill; and even now is so actively pouring American settlers into the British province of Alberta that the Fourth of July is duly celebrated at the principal town in the province. And while it seems necessary to the completeness of the story to include all such movements of men or population as sustains the proposition of an evolutionary movement, yet it is not intended to burden the record with accounts of the many tentative and abortive efforts at exploration, or of those that were merely for trade. After seventy days sailing westward, Columbus struck Cat island in the West Indies. It was inhabited by red men. The people of Hindostan (India) were red. Columbus believed he had reached India—the east coast of Asia; and he called the natives Indians. The name stuck, and thus all the natives of America came to be called Indians. Columbus made three subsequent voyages from Spain to the West India islands, but never reached the mainland, and died in ignorance of his great discovery of a continent equal to the old world and separated from it by two great oceans. When we look into the books of geographical discovery, we find that the site of the city of Portland was for a long period of time the center of a great   ​ CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS (The greatest tribute paid to this greatest man is the following from the pen of Oregon's poet— Joaquin Miller .) Behind him lay the gray Azores, Behind the Gates of Hercules; Behind him not the ghost of shores. Behind him only shoreless seas. The good mate said: "Now, we must pray. For lo, the very stars are gone. Brave Adm'r'l speak: What shall I say?" "Why say, 'Sail on! sail on! How this mythical strait idea ever got possession of the minds of the sea rovers of that age, has never been satisfactorily explained, and its real origin will probably never be discovered. But that the idea did get possession of the minds of many navigators, causing vast expenditures of money and the loss of many lives, there is ample proof. Many of the old maps of that period show the strait connecting the two oceans, and one of these maps made by one Conrad Low in 1598, and printed in his Book of Six Heroes , is almost a perfect map of what all the world now knows of Bering Strait, and even showing the Yukon river under the name of Obila. And yet all these maps were purely imaginary; California being platted close up to where our late hero Dr. Cook crossed hundreds of miles of ice to reach the north pole. And to show how the mythical and mysterious had taken possession of men's minds in that age, and finally located Oregon in the very core of all this fanciful geography and imaginary wilderness of myths; we may refer to a few examples of these grand stories of the bold sea rovers.   ​ It seems necessary to state these particulars of Drake's discovery, as they throw light upon the claim the British government afterwards set up to Oregon. If Drake, on that voyage, did actually reach Oregon, then according to the international law of that period, the English had a right to Oregon from discovery. But the British government never claimed anything for Drake or that voyage. Why? Drake was at that time a pirate, and outlaw, and no rights could be founded on the acts of such. There can be but little doubt that the character of Drake's expedition was well known to the British government. In consequence of this information there was a sort of gold mine stampede to the new found El Dorado in the fur bearing haunts of Finding the English ships had two sets of papers, one English and one Portuguese, prepared to sail under two different flags, the Spaniards promptly arrested the Englishmen, and thereby hangs the tale of a good-sized tempest in a teapot settlement at Nootka sound. Back and under the whole trouble was the strife to get furs from the Indians. The Spaniards had never made any settlement in the country or left a single priest to convert the heathen. Neither had the English. He was not only the first to sail a ship through the Straits of Fuca,—the discoverer of the Columbia river, but he was the first American to circumnavigate the globe under the national flag , which he did in 1790, by the way of Good Hope, trading his furs to the Chinese at Canton for a cargo of tea. Here our record of the explorations of the northwest from the seacoast comes to a close. We have given enough to enable the reader to follow the story and see how these explorations gradually concentrated to the point of discovering the river which drains the empire which is building this city. The foundation of our title to the whole northwest clear up to the Alaskan boundary, and the natural selection of this point for the central and chief city of all this vast region will be better understood when reading future chapters after having read this chapter through.  Retrieved from " https://en.wikisource.org/w/index.php?title=Portland,_Oregon:_Its_History_and_Builders/Volume_1/Chapter_1&oldid=8931562 " Hidden category: Subpages Search Search Portland, Oregon: Its History and Builders/Volume 1/Chapter 1 Add languages Add topic

... El Dorado . The very name given to the land , " El Dorado , " seems to sug- gest this . " Manoa , " or ... never existed . There was no second empire of the Incas in Guyana or anywhere else . El Dorado was , therefore , a ... This challenging book argues that a new way of speaking of mathematics and describing it emerged at the end of the 16th century. Leading mathematicians began referring to their field in terms drawn from the exploration accounts of Columbus and Magellan. Many of those who promoted the vision of mathematics as heroic exploration also played central roles in developing the most important mathematical innovation of the period?the infinitesimal methods, which the author shows was no coincidence.