A Becent Visit to Lake Itasca — Upham. 285 



forest to Cass lake, which seems to have been regarded for some 

 years afterward as the principal source of the river. A few years 

 later, in 1823, Beltrami traversed the country between tl^e Red 

 River valley and the upper Mississippi, crossing Red lake and 

 entering the Mississippi basin above Cass lake by way of the Turtle 

 lake and river, which, from his sentimental and interesting narra- 

 tive published as letters to a lady named Julia, are called the Julian 

 sources of the Mississippi. But another stream, somewhat larger 

 than the Turtle river, was known to come from the west and south- 

 west, and in 1832 Schoolcraft, under instructions from the govern- 

 ment, conducted an expedition up that stream, which has ever 

 since been rightly considered the main Mississippi,. to thelakeatits 

 head, which the Indians called Omushkos, that is. Elk lake, but which 

 Schoolcraft then named Itasca, from the Latin words Veritas^ truth, 

 and caputs head, the name being made by writing the words to- 

 gether and cutting off, like Procrustes, the first and last syllables. 

 Four years later, in 1836, Nicollet more fully explored this lake, 

 and claimed that its largest tributary, the creek or brook flowing 

 into the extremity of its Southwest arm, is ''truly the infant Mis- 

 sissippi." 



Here the question rested until Glazier in 1881 , six years after 

 the Government sectional survey of that area, made his expedition 

 to Itasca and to the lake in Section 22, Town 143, Range 36, called 

 by the Government survey plats Elk lake, lying close southeast 

 of the Southwest arm of Itasca, and thence voyaged in a birch 

 canoe io the mouth of the Mississippi. His ridiculous re-naming 

 of Elk lake in his subsequently published book and maps has anew 

 directed the attention of geographers to the determination of the 

 source of the Mississippi, In October, 1886, Mr. Hopewell Clarke of 

 Minneapolis, for Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co., publishers. New 

 York, made a reconnoissance of lake Itasca and its basin, occupy- 

 ing five days. His report, which appeared in Science for Decem- 

 ber 24, 1886, fully sustains the work and conclusion of Nicollet, 

 whose admirable map of the Northwest, comprising Minnesota and 

 adjacent states, published about fifty years ago, when the first set- 

 tlement at Saint Paul was beginning to be made, cannot receive 

 too high praise. A far more detailed examination of the Itasca 

 basin has since been made by Mr. J. V. Brower, for the Minne- 

 sota Historical Society, chiefiy during last autumn and spring, and 

 his report, illustrated by maps and photographs, will soon be pub- 



