324 



8CIENCJE. 



[Vol. VIII. , No. 192 



143, and spent a few hours the next day in making 

 his great explorations. The accuracy of this map 

 was fully verified by the late Mr. 0. E, Garrison, 

 who went carefully over the ground in July, 1880, 

 in the service of the tenth U. S. census and of the 

 Minnesota geological and natural history survey. 

 Mr. Garrison travelled from south to north over the 

 very line of Mr. Pearce Giles's ' infant Mississippi,' 

 but he failed to find it ; nor did he find any other 

 stream flowing northward from any point more than 

 two miles south of Itasca. The map is also certified 

 to be correct by the land and timber agents of the 

 Northern Pacific railroad, who have been over every 

 quarter-section of these townships repeatedly since 

 the official survey in 1875. I have now before me a 

 copy of a letter from one of these hardy and intelli- 

 gent woodsmen, written in October, 1875, describing 

 a trip over this very ground, right on the heels of the 

 government surveyors ; and his report, while fully 

 describing Elk Lake and Lake Itasca, makes no men- 

 tion of any such lake or stream as Mr. Pearce Giles 

 describes above. 



The scale of the map is certainly adequate for Mr. 

 Pearce Giles's use. Each small square represents a 

 square mile, and the map thus shows us a stretch of 

 fully seven miles south of Itasca. 



It is due to " the majority of American geographers 

 and map-makers," who, according to Mr. Pearce 

 Giles, " now recognize Lake Glazier as the primal 

 reservoir of the Great Eiver," that he or Captain 

 Glazier point out the exact location of his lake, since 

 so many official and unofficial expeditions have failed 

 to find it. 



But really is not Mr. Pearce Giles claiming too 

 much for Captain Glazier, in view of what has al- 

 ready been published by the captain and members of 

 his party ? This is the way one of the party, Mr. 

 Bartlett Channing Paine, described the ' infant Mis- 

 sissippi ' and ' Lake Glazier ' in a letter to the St. 

 Paul Pioneer press, dated Aug. 8, 1881 : — 



" We started for the upper end of the lake [Itasca] 

 early next morning, finding when we reached it that 

 it terminated in bulrushes and what seemed to be a 

 swamp. Our guide, however, took us through the 

 rushes, and we found that a small but swift stream 

 entered here, up which with difficulty we pushed our 

 canoes. This stream, is about half a mile long, and 

 flows from one of the prettiest lakes we have seen on 

 our trip. The shores are high rather than marshy, 

 and covered with verdure ; and the lake, which is 

 nearly round, its regularity being broken by but one 

 point, has a greatest diameter of a mile and a half, 

 or perhaps two miles. Into this lake flow three 

 small streams which rise in marshy ground from a 

 mile to three miles from the lake. Having previously 

 estimated the volume of water flowing into Itasca by 

 all the streams contributing to it, and found the one 

 from this lake much in excess of that of others, we 

 held a little meeting on the point, and unanimously 

 voted to call the new-found body of water Lake 

 Glazier, in honor of the head of our partj'." 



Every reader of this letter will agree with me in 

 saying that Mr. Bartlett Channing Paine is describing, 

 not a new-found Lake Glazier, but simply Elk Lake 

 of the government survey of 1875, — that and nothing 

 else. Further, Captain Glazier's own map, a fac- 

 simile of a part of which is here given, agrees with 

 Mr. Paine, and shows Lake Glazier, as measured by 

 the scale, less than a mile south of Lake Itasca. It 

 is evident that Captain Glazier may have really 



thought that he was the first white man to visit Elk 

 Lake. 



But that was not to be wondered at. People gen- 

 erally did not know about Elk Lake, and Captain 

 Glazier had won a little temporary fame, which might 

 be considered nothing worse than laughable. He 

 might have acknowledged his blunder, and gone on 

 making money lecturing on the ' Heroes of Missis- 

 sippi exploration,' of whom he had ceased to be the 

 chiefest and last. This, however, does not seem to 

 suit the captain and his friends, and they are making 

 a last desperate effort to distort the facts of geogra- 



MAPTO ILLUSTRATE 



CAPTAIN WILLARD GLAZIER'S 



VOYAGE OF EXPLORATION TO THE 



SOURCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI MlWSi 



DRAWN FROM DELINEATIONS BY HIS INDIAN GUIDE 



CHE-NO-WA-GJE-SIC. 



SCALE OF'MILES 



12 3 4 5 



I ssn^aflt^Hl 



phy to suit their ambitions and conceits. The worth- 

 lessness of their actual discoveries being shown, they 

 now propose to strike out five miles to the south over 

 the crest of the heights of land, and locate a new 

 Lake Glazier to suit themselves, which no mortal has 

 ever set eye upon. Until water can be made to flow 

 up hill, this latest Lake Glazier will not answer its 

 purpose. The crest of the heights of land is only 

 about three miles from the southern extremity of 

 Lake Itasca. Yet Captain Glazier would have us be- 

 lieve that above Lake Itasca he found five miles of 

 ' infant Mississippi,' one and a half miles of ' Lake 

 Glazier,' and inlets of the latter reaching a mile or 

 two farther south, — in all, a continuous water-course 

 flowing into Lake Itasca from a point eight or nine 



