No. 7.] AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY. 421 



civilisation and commerce. We look, ami often look ong, fo 

 their footsteps to follow. Here for the first time she has been 

 outstripped, for the telegraph and the railway have tracked the 

 forest or prairie, and traversed the mountains by paths before 

 unknown to her, 



" I remember that patriarch oT science. Sir Edward Sabine, 

 once telling me how eagerly he, as a young man, had desired to 

 retread the footsteps of Lewis and Clarke, whose journey from 

 St. Louis to the Pacific in 1805, was at the time, and must long 

 remain, one of the most remarkable achievements on record, 



'' Let me, then, remind you that within living memory (I grant 

 a long one) no traveller known to fame had crossed the American 

 continent from east to west, except Alexander Mackenzie, in 

 1793. No traveller had reached the American Polar Sea by 

 land, except the same illustrious explorer and Samuel Hearne. 

 The British Admiralty had not 1 )ng before instructed Captain 

 Vancouver to search on the coast of the Pacific for some near 

 communication with a river flowius: into or out of the Lake of 

 the Woods. The fabulous Straits of Annian are to be found on 

 maps of the last century. ' The sacred fires of Montezuma ' 

 were still burning in secluded valleys of Upper California when 

 her Majesty ascended the throne. 



" It is very interesting to observe that De la Hontan, whose 

 name has been recently given by the American geologists to the 

 great Miocene Sea, now represented by Carson Lake in Nevada, 

 ascended the Mississippi, and even penetrated up the Yellowstone, 

 very nearly to the ' National Park,' at all events, into the present 

 territory of Montana, so early as 1687, He introduces into his 

 rude map a head-water lake, on Indian information, which must, 

 I think, be identical with a lake in that reserve. * Je s§ais,' says 

 his biographer, ' que tous les voyageurs sont sujets a caution, et 

 que s'ils ne sont point parvenus au privilege des poetes et des 

 peintres, il ne s'en faut gudre : muis il faut excepter de la no- 

 blesse ; est-il croyable qu'un baron voulut en imposer ? ' But I 

 am not pursuing the attractive theme oficred by historical 

 geography, and must not dwell on the memorable expeditions of 

 Franklin and Richardson, of Back and Simpson and Rae, but 

 proceed to point out the many agencies at work of lata years to 

 open up the continent: the military operations, for example, of 

 the United States' Government against Mexico ; the discovery 

 of the precious metals; the exploration for the Union Pacific 



