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Show BARON LA HONTAN'S LAKE OF SALT WATER. 168 him four hundred of his own subjects and four Mozeemlek savages, whom I took for Spaniards. My mistake was occasioned by the great difference between these two American nations; for the Mozeemlek savages were clothed, they had a thick bushy beard, and their hair hung down under their ears; their complexion was swarthy, their address was civil and submissive, their mien grave, and their carriage engaging. Upon these considerations I could not imagine that they were savages, though, after all, I found myself mistaken. These four slaves gave me a description of their country, which the Gnacsitares represented by way of a map upon a deer's skin, as you see it drawn in this map. Their villages stand upon a river that springs out of a ridge of mountains, from which the Long River likewise derives its source, there being a great many brooks there, which, by a joint confluence, form the river." « The Mozeemlek nation is numerous and puissant. The four slaves of that country informed me that at the distance of one hundred and fifty leagues from the place I then was, their principal river empties itself into a salt lake of three hundred leagues in circumference, the mouth of which is two leagues broad; that the lower part of that river is adorned with six noble cities, surrounded with stone cemented with fat earth; that the houses of; these cities have no roofs, but are open above, like a platform, as you see them drawn in the map; that besides the above- mentioned cities, there are above an hundred towns, great and small, round that sort of sea, upon which they navigate with such boats as you see drawn in the map ;* that the people of that country mad* stuffs, copper axes, and several other manufactures, which the Outagamis and my other interpreters could not give me to understand, as being altogether unacquainted with such things; that their government was despotic, and lodged in the hands of one great head, to whom the rest paid a trembling submission; that the people upon that lake are called Tahuglauk, and are as numerous as the leaves of trees, ( such is the expression that the savages use for an hyperbole;) that the Mozeemlek people supply the cities * The boata, with a drawing, are thus described in the map:-" The vessels need by the Tahuglauk, in which two hundred men may row, proyided they are such forme as y* Moxeemlek people drew me on y* bark of trees. According to my computation, such a Teasel must be one hundred and thirty feet long from the prow to ' the stern." |
