ANTICIPATED ROUTE ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 155 



and having to do with several persons that did not well understand 

 themselves, I could make nothing of their incoherent fustian." 



A detailed map accompanies this imaginative voyage up this most 

 imaginary river. It is represented as flowing due east through 25 

 degrees of longitude, numerous streams putting into it on either 

 side, with mountains, islands, villages, and domains of Indian tribes, 

 whose very names have at this day sunk into oblivion. The map 

 was afterward published, in 1710, by John Senex, F. R. S., as a 

 part of "North America, corrected from the observations communi- 

 cated to the Royal Society at London and the Royal Academy at 

 Paris," and I have annexed it as a specimen of the geographical 

 knowledge of America enjoyed at that period. 



This discovery of Baron La Hontan excited, even at that early 

 day, the spirit of enterprise and speculation which has proved so 

 marked a feature in the national character. In a work published 

 in this country in 1772, and entitled "A description of the Pro- 

 vince of Carolana, by the Spaniards called Florida, and by the 

 French La Louisiane, by Daniel Cox," the then proprietary, the 

 first part of the fifth chapter is devoted to a "A new and cu- 

 rious discovery and relation of an easy communication between 

 the river Meschacebe (Mississippi) and the South Sea which sepa- 

 rates America from China, by means of several large rivers and 

 lakes." 



The author says : — " It will be of great conveniency to this coun- 

 try, if ever it becomes to he settled^ that there is an easy commu- 

 nication therewith and the South Sea, which lies between America 

 and China, and that two ways : by the north branch of the great 

 Yellow River, by the natives called the river of the Massorites," 

 (doubtless the Missouri,) "which hath a course of five hundred 

 miles, navigable to its heads or springs, and which proceeds from 

 a ridge of hills somewhat north of New Mexico, passable by horse, 

 foot, or wagon, in less than half a day. On the other side are 

 rivers which run into a great laJce that empties itself hy another 

 great navigable river into the South Sea. The same may be said 

 of the Meschaouay, up which our people have been, but not so far 

 as the Baron La Hontan, who passed on it above three hundred 

 miles almost due west, and declares it comes from the same ridge 

 of hills above mentioned, and that divers rivers from the other side 

 soon make a large river, which enters into a vast lake, on which 

 inhabit two or three great nations, much more populous and civil- 

 ized than other Indians ; and out of that lake a great river disem- 



