246 LAHONTAN. 



briD"' ridicule upon the reported discoveries of other travellers in the 

 in the west, and in particular on Marquette's map of the Lower 

 Mississippi, which probably he had seen and through prejudice perhaps 

 discredited — a map which, though drawn in good faith, represents the 

 relative magnitudes of the principal river and a number of its affluents 

 very incorrectly, as was to be expected in a first rude unscientific 

 delineation, made simply by the aid of the eye. 



As to the river which Lahontan visited, and, to some extent, ex- 

 plored, it is supposed to be that known at the present time as St, Peter's, 

 or Minnesota River, which enters the Mississippi at Fort Snelling. 

 St. Peter's or Minnesota River anywhere else would be considered a 

 stream of considerable magnitude. Its entire length is estimated at 

 four hundred and fifty miles. It is navigable at high water, for steam- 

 steamboats, sixty miles from Fort Snelling. It is suggested in Perkins' 

 Annals of the West, p. 20, published at Cincinnati in 1846, that " the 

 baron entered St. Peter's when filled with the back waters of the 

 Mississippi, and that he heard from the Indians of the connection by 

 it and the Red River with Lake Winnipeg, and the communication 

 between that lake and Hudson's Bay by Nelson River, and looking 

 westward all the while, turned Hudson's Bay into the South Sea." 

 la sailing, and other modes of locomotion, a person's head is some- 

 times turned about, as the expression is. Perkins' hypothesis would 

 require us to imagine that some such confusion in regard to the points 

 of the compass had arisen in the mind either of Lahontan or of his 

 informants. It is more reasonable to imagine that Lahontan on this occa- 

 sion, and at other times in the course of his wanderings, fell in with 

 Indians acquainted in some degree, either by experience or by hearsay 

 and oral tradition, with the well-beaten trails leading across from the 

 head-waters of the Missouri to the head-waters of the Colorado. In 

 this case the Salt Lake spoken of will have meant the Grulf of California, 

 with stories and traditions mixed up, of the stone-built cities of Mexico 

 and Central America, which, as we know, were by no means myths. In 

 Nicollet's Report to Congress in 1843, it is supposed that Cannon 

 River is the one entered by Lahontan; and Nicollet accordingly names 

 that stream "the River Lahontan." The whole length of Cannon 

 River, however, is only 80 miles. 



The account which Lahontan gives of the origin of his book is 

 is this : On leaving France for Canada, on military duty, he promised 

 an aged relative of his, to whom he was indebted for an annual allow- 



