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Show BARON LA HONTAN. 151 CHAPTER VIII. SABLT KNOWLEDGE OF THS EXISTENCE OF A BODY OF SALT WATER IN THIS REGION, BY BARON LA HONTAN.- SURVEY OF THS GREAT SALT LAKE. THE opening of the spring at length enabling us to prepare for a renewal of active operations in the field, the opportunity was eagerly embraced, since upon the completion of the survey before the setting in of cold weather depended the return of the party to their homes before the recurrence of winter. The season was now approaching when it would become our duty to enter upon a critical examination of this interesting and hitherto almost unknown region, and the remarkable body of water to which it is indebted for so much of the interest which attaches to it. It may not, therefore, be deemed inappropriate to look back and see what ideas prevailed in regard to it during the infant period of our national geography. The existence of a large lake of salt water somewhere amid the wilds west of the Rocky Mountains seems to have been known vaguely as long as one hundred and fifty years since. As early as May, 1689, the Baron La Hontan, « lord- lieutenant of the French colony at Placentia in New Foundland," wrote an account of discoveries in this region, which was published in the English language in 1735. In the letter, which is dated at " Missilimakinac," he gives " an account of the author's departure from and return to Missilimakinac; a description of the Bay of Puants, and its villages; an ample description of the beavers, followed by the journal of a remarkable voyage upon the Long River, and a map of the adjacent country." Leaving Mackinaw, he passed into Green Bay, which he calls " the Bay of Pouteouotamis," and arrived at the mouth of the Fox River, which he describes as " a little deep sort of a river which disembogues at a place where the water of the lake swells three feet high in twelve hours, and decreases as much in the same compass of time/' |