250 NARRATIVE OF THE EXPEDITION. 



primary forks. Lieut. Allen determined to remain till daylight, 

 in order to trace the river down to the point at which it had been 

 left in the ascent. Nothing of an untoward nature occurred. A 

 river of some size enters, on the left hand, about six miles below 

 the saurian encampment, which originates in a lake. This stream, 

 for which I heard no name, I designated AUenoga, putting the 

 Iroquois local terminal in oga to the name of the worthy officer 

 who traced out the first true map of the actual sources of the 

 Mississippi.* We passed the influx of the east fork, about half- 

 past one A.M. on the 15th, traversed the Lake of Queen Anne, and 

 descended the whole series of the Metoswa rapids, to Lake An- 

 drusia, by the hour of daybreak, and reached the island of my 

 primary encampment, in Cass Lake, at nine o'clock in the morning. 

 We had been eleven hours and a half in our canoes, from the time 

 of re-embarkation at the camp above Allenoga. Lieut. Allen did 

 not rejoin us till six o'clock in the afternoon. He estimated the 

 entire distance, out and m, at 290 miles, it being 125 miles to 

 Itasca Lake, and, as before intimated, 165 miles from thence to 

 Cass Lake. He estimates the length of the Mississippi, above the 

 Falls of St. Anthony, at 1,029 miles. Taking the distance from 

 the Gulf of Mexico to the Falls at 2,200 miles,t this would give 

 to this stream a development of 3,229 miles, which exceeds my 

 prior estimates more than fifty miles. 



* Lieut.-Col. James Allen, U. S. A. This officer graduated at West Point in 1825. 

 After passing through various grades, he was promoted to a captaincy of infantry in 

 1837. He was lieutenant-colonel and commandant of the battalion of Mormon 

 volunteers in the Mexican war, which was raised by his exertions, and died at Fort 

 Leavenworth, on the Missouri, on the 23d of August, 1846. 



t Doc. No. 237. 



