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Show ANTICIPATED ROUTE ACROSS THE CONTINENT. 155 And haying to do with several persons that did not well understand themselves, I comld make nothing of their incoherent fustian." A detailed map accompanies this imaginative voyage up this most imaginary riven It is represented as flowing due east through 25 , degrees of longitude, numefous* 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 Hon tan excited, wen 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 cpimtry i^ 1772, and entitled " A description of the Pro- . vince of Garolana, by the Spaniards called Florida, and by the French JLa Louisiane, by Daniel Cox, 91 the then proprietary, the first part of the fifth chapter is devoted to a " A new and curious 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 f lakes." ' The author says:-" It will be of great conveniency to this country, if ever it becomes to be settled, that there- is an easy communication therewith and the South Sea, which lies between America and Chjna, and that two ways: by the north branch of, the great Yellow/ River, by the natives tailed 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 by another great navigable river into tie South Sea. The same majjr be said of the Meschaouay, up which our people have been, but not BO far as the Baron La Hon tan, 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 riVera from the other side soon make a large river, which enters into a vast lake, on which inhabit two or three great nation*, much more populous and civilised than other Indians y and out of that lake a great river disem- |