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Show 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 communicated 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 Province of Carolana, by the Spaniards called Florida, and by the ! French La Louisiane, by Daniel Cox," the then proprietary, the j first part of the fifth chapter is devoted to a " A new and cu- • rious discovery and relation of an easy communication between j the river Meschacebe ( Mississippi) and the South Sea which separates America from China, by means of several large rivers and lakes." The author says:- « It will be of great conveniency to this country, if ever it become* to be Mettled, that there is an easy communication 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 lake that empties itself ty 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 civilised than other Indians; and out of that lake a great river disem* * |