HISTORY. 81 



may not have taken place in 1690 or 1700 to the extent it 

 has now attained, a great lake may have covered all that 

 area, — or, at least, that the physical geography of the country 

 at that time may have presented some difference in the quan- 

 tity and disposition of its hydrographical outline. In the pre- 

 sent century, the Missouri has so changed its course that 

 Nicollet was unable to find some of the bends described by 

 Lewis and Clarke, thirty years before. 



The supposition of Nicollet, that he passed through Can- 

 non River, is not improbable. The sources of Cannon 

 River are within four or five miles of an eastern branch of 

 Blue Earth River, and the intervening ground is a perfect 

 level. The communication may, at the time of the voyage, 

 liave been complete, or been made so by a freshet, and he 

 Avould thus have passed through the Blue Earth into St. 

 Peter's. It is not improbable that the St. Peter's itself once 

 pursued this course, more in unison with the course of the 

 river higher up, and disembogued where the mouth of Can- 

 non River now is. At this day the St. Peter's, at the mouth 

 of the Blue Earth, makes a bend at right angles with its 

 former course, as stated above. It is well known that at 

 high stages of water, boats may now pass into Rock River 

 through the Marais D'Osiers, thirty miles above the mouth 

 of Rock River. 



Lahontan's descriptions are too particular, and his narra- 

 tive too circumstantial and too probable, to one acquainted 

 with the northwest, to be discredited, merely on accoiuit of a 

 supposed impossibility of performing the voyage, because of 

 the physical unfitness of the country at this day. His work 

 was, it is true, decried in its time by the Jesuits, but this 

 was for the reason that he had spoken lightly of them ; and, 

 because, from ignorance of the country and the people, state- 

 ments which are now known to be correct, would then have 



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