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Show RAKON L4' HONTAN. 151 CHAPTER vm. . « •. • SABLT KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXISTENCE OF A BODY OF SALT WATER IN THIS REGION, BY BARON LA HONTAN.- SURVEY. OF THE tf& EAT SALT" LAKE. % • // THE opening 6f the spring at length enabling us lo 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 Its. " It may not, therefore, be deemed inappropriate, to look back and see what ideas prevailed in regard to it during> tbe infant period of your national geography. < The existence, of a large lake of salt water somewhere amid the wilds west of the- Bodky Mountains seems to have been known vaguely as long as one hundred and fifty yefers since. As early as , May, 1689, the Baron La Hontan, " lord- lieutenant of the French colony at Placentiaon- New Foiindland," wrote an account of discoveries ifi this region, which was published in the English language in 1785. • • . . ' , . '. ilxx & a letter, which is dated at " Missilimakinac," he gives " fen 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 fUhe Bay of Pduteduotamis," apd arrived at ihe 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 hofirs, and decreases, as much in the same compass of time." |