LAHONTAN. 245 



■Qever seen in public," «&c. &c. It may be observed that Marquette, on 

 •whose narrative no doubt rests, heard, when at the mouth of the 

 Missouri, several years previously, of a portage up that river, across a 

 prairie of only five or six days' journey, by which a river running west 

 into the sea could readily be reached. This sea he believed to be the 

 l*acific Ocean ; and " If God gives me health," Marquette added? 

 "I do not despair of one day making the discovery." 



It was, as we have said, the contents of his 16th chapter or letter, 

 that brought the rest of Lahontan's book into disrepute. The informa- 

 tion gathered from his aboriginal authorities was evidently not to be 

 relied on. The details of his own journey to the country of the so-called 

 Grnacsitares, its stages and distances, were also glaringly incredible. 

 No sane person who reflected for a moment could believe that it was 

 possible in the months of December, January, February and March — 

 these were the 'months taken up with his too-famous excursion — to 

 conduct a flotilla of boats with a considerable body of soldiers, and a 

 number of native guides and attendants, with a store of provisions 

 and arms, and apparently an unlimited supply of presents, up and 

 down an extensive North American river in the latitudes in which the 

 newly-explored river was supposed to be situated — especially to do it 

 with the magical facility with which Lahontan represents himself to 

 have accomplished the feat. I do not think that he ever expected 

 his story, as contained in this chapter, to be taken as literal truth by 

 any one who should trouble himself to think seriously on the subject. 

 The utter extravagance of the map, too, which he gives in illustration of 

 his jaunt, was an admonition, as I take it, that the whole thing was a 

 piece of rhodomontade. He records, in fact, upon the face of the chart, 

 that the most important portion of it was drawn for him on a piece of 

 buck-skin by his friends the G-nacsitares, " who gave me to know," he 

 adds in the same memorandum, " the latitudes of ail the places marked in 

 by pointing to the respective places of the heavens that one or Other 

 corresponded to ; for by this means I could adjust the latitude to half 

 a degree or little more; having first received from them a computation 

 of the distances in Tazous, each of which I compute to be three long 

 French leagues." The part of the Riviere Longue (or Riviere Morte, 

 as he says some persons call it), explored by him, he sketched out on 

 his map in continuation of the stream as drawn by his friends the 

 G-nacsitares, making it appear a river fully as large and important as 

 the Mississippi itself — One might almost imagine that he desired to 



