600 



scmisrcE. 



LVoL. Vlll., No. 203 



of lakes and navigable streams, and in the general 

 platting of the land, they are proverbially reli- 

 able ; but there is absolutely no account taken of 

 elevation, and the drainage or trend of the land 

 can only be inferred from the course and direc- 

 tion of the streams encountered in running the 

 section lines. 



" Nicollet's exploration was made in 1836, be- 

 fore a surveyor's stake had been set within the 

 limits of Minnesota. The government surveyors 

 of 1875 perhaps never heard of Nicollet, and cer- 

 tainly had no thought of supplementing or verify- 

 ing his woi'k." 



In addition to the discrepancy noted above, an- 

 other element of uncertainty has been introduced 

 by the effort to maintain the claims of Captain 

 Glazier as the discoverer of a new lake, unknown 

 before his visit to the Itasca region in 1881. In 

 order to maintain this claim, it is necessary to set 

 aside entirely the map of NicoUet, to discredit the 

 work of the government surveyors, and to ignore 

 Garrison, Siegfried, Gilfillan, and every other ex- 

 plorer who has been to this region during the last 

 half-century. With a dozen trustworthy parties 

 on one side, maintaining the general accuracy of 

 Nicollet and the government land-office map, and 

 with Captain Glazier and his friends alone on the 

 other side, it was not difficult to decide where the 

 truth lay. But as no one had yet attempted to 

 make an accurate survey of the topographical 

 features of this region in the light of a govern- 

 ment survey, and as Nicollet's work was simply 

 topographical, without any attempt at accurate 

 platting of areas, there was plenty of room for 

 Captain Glazier, or any one else who chose, to 

 come in and advance all sorts of claims. If, as 

 was claimed by Mr. Pearce Giles on behalf of Cap- 

 tain Glazier, there was found three or four miles 

 south of Lake Itasca another tributary lake, two 

 miles long and a mile and a half wide, this cer- 

 tainly could not be Elk Lake, or any other lake 

 laid down in the government survey. But if, as 

 described by another of his friends. Captain Gla- 

 zier's lake was less than half a mile south of Lake 

 Itasca, it was undoubtedly Elk Lake, — the same 

 that Nicollet shows, with its three feeders, on his 

 map deposited in the office of engineers at Wash- 

 ington,— the same that Chambers visited and 

 named Dolly Varden in 1872, — the same that the 

 government surveyors accurately outlined and 

 named Elk Lake in 1875, —the same that the Rev. 

 Mr. Gilfillan and Professor Cooke explored and 

 named Lake Breck in May, 1881. 



But it was not simply to prove or disprove the 

 truth of Captain Glazier's claim, that we made 

 this effort at an accurate topographical survey of 

 this region. Nicollet has furnished us with a 



map and a report of his explorations of the sources 

 of the Mississippi, and these explorations have 

 been a matter of history for fifty years. His 

 maps have been public documents, accessible to 

 everybody ; and we believe, that, if his work is to 

 be discredited, it should only be after the most 

 careful and accurate survey. The government 

 surveyors also were charged with having entirely 

 overlooked a lake of more than a square mile in 

 extent, lying several miles south of Lake Itasca. 

 If these government officers are not to be relied 

 upon to give us accurate maps and honest service, 

 it is time that the people should know it ; it is time 

 that geographers and map-makers should know 

 it ; and we knew of no way so satisfactory as a 

 careful i-eview of the work, both of Nicollet and 

 of the government surveyors. And this review 

 afforded us an opportunity to correct the one by 

 the other, in case they were each reasonably cor- 

 rect in their respective fields of work. 



We are glad to be able to report that the most 

 careful running of the lines of the government 

 surveyors have proved the almost absolute accu- 

 racy of their work. Our explorers were also able 

 to detect and to account for some interesting minor 

 inaccuracies of the land-office plat of this town- 

 ship ; but it was well worth the making of the 

 error to discover the remarkable natural phe- 

 nomenon whereby this was fully explained. We 

 refer to the underground passage of the stream 

 on the section line between sections 21 and 22, by 

 which the government surveyors were deceived, 

 and led into thinking that the stream did not pass 

 out of section 23 at all, but kept north through the 

 western part of that section. 



It is also a cause of satisfaction to find the sub- 

 stantial accuracy of Nicollet's report and map of 

 this region. There are, it is true, manifest dis- 

 crepancies between his lines and those of the 

 government survey. Lake Itasca is much broader,. 

 Elk Lake much smaller, proportionally on his 

 map than on the map of the government survey, 

 and the latter is found to be correct. A large 

 share of this variation is due to the fact that 

 Nicollet made his surveys by the eye entirely, and 

 many of his drawings of the course of the streams 

 and the contour of lakes were made upon birch- 

 bark, and only transferred to paper afterwards. 

 But beside this » explanation, our explorers also 

 found reason to believe that Itasca Lake was at 

 one time several inches higher than it is now ; and 

 if, on the other hand, Elk Lake was once of a 

 lower level than now, the two coming together 

 would account for the difference in form they 

 exhibited in 1836, as compared with their present 

 outlines. 



According to Mr. Gilfillan, the Indians called 



