Chapter 20
Ocian in View
The Columbia River estuary and Station Camp, present-day Washington
Clark wrote “Ocian in view! O! the joy” on 7 November 1805, though what he saw was the wide estuary of the Columbia, still about twenty miles from the sea. Storms trapped the Corps on the rocks for days, and they finally reached a camp looking out on the Pacific on 15 November 1805.
7 November 1805
On the morning of 7 November the fog lifts, and in front of them the river opens out so wide they can barely see the other side. Clark writes in his notebook: “Ocian in view! O! the joy.”
That night, in his journal, he writes it out again: “Great joy in camp we are in View of the Ocian, this great Pacific Octean which we been So long anxious to See. and the roreing or noise made by the waves brakeing on the rockey Shores (as I Suppose) may be heard disti[n]ctly.”
He is not quite right. What he can see is the estuary of the Columbia, where the river meets the tides, and the ocean itself is still about twenty miles away. But the waves are real. That evening, he writes, “the Seas roled and tossed the Canoes in such a manner this evening that Several of our party were Sea sick.”
8–14 November 1805
Then the weather traps them. Storm after storm blows in from the ocean. Huge waves and drifting logs, whole trees, smash against the shore. For almost a week they are pinned in a narrow cove on the north bank, today called Dismal Nitch, with steep rocky hills behind them and wild water in front.
It rains without stopping. Their clothes and bedding rot. They have nothing to eat but a little dried fish. They cannot go forward and they cannot go back. After eighteen months of travel, they are stuck within sight of the end.
15 November 1805
On 15 November the wind drops at last. The Corps loads the canoes and rounds the point to a sandy beach. Clark writes that the ocean “is imedeately in front and gives us an extensive view of it from Cape disapointment to Point addams.” They set up camp. Today the place is called Station Camp.
They have done it. They have crossed the continent, about four thousand miles from St. Louis, to the Pacific Ocean.
18 November 1805
On 18 November Clark takes a small party and walks to the headland at the mouth of the river, Cape Disappointment, to look out over the real ocean. Then he walks north along the beach. “I proceeded on the sandy coast 4 miles,” he writes, “and marked my name on a Small pine, the Day of the month & year.”
Lewis has already made the same walk. Carving their names is a way of saying: we were here, and the United States was here first. British and American ships have been sailing into this river for thirteen years, and the Chinook people who live here trade with them every summer.
20 November 1805
The Chinook know all about white traders, and they drive a hard bargain. Clark writes that they prove they have met ships before by “repeating many words of English, as musquit, powder, shot, [k]nife, file, damned rascal,” and some ruder ones the sailors taught them.
On 20 November a Chinook man comes into camp wearing a robe of sea-otter fur, the finest fur the captains have ever seen. They offer him all kinds of things for it. He wants only blue beads. In the end, Clark writes, “we at length purchased it for a belt of Blue Beeds which the Squar had.” The Squar is Sacagawea. The robe goes into the captains’ collection. The belt, which was hers, goes to the Chinook man.