Till; WEST SHORE.
Oregon, a thin wan the farthest north a magazine entitled "Monthly Miscel
any Eurf.jK'nn vessel had yet penetrated lany, or Memoirs of the Curious." Ijj
in the Pacific. " A short distance fur- this appeared a long account of an al
ther north," says the Spanish historian, leged voyage, said to have been made in
Topjuemada, was "discovered a rapid 1004, from the Pacific to the Atlantic
and abundant river, with ash trees, wil- and return, through a system of rivers
Ion , brambles and other trees of Castile and lakes, crossing North America at
on it bnnka, which they endeavored to about the fifty-third parallel. This v0y
enter, but could not from the force of age was credited to Admiral Pedro Bar
the current." From tin's point the fra- tolme" de Font6, of the Spanish marine
ijnln wait Leaded back for Acapulco, but who was engaged in explorations under
I-fore reaching that port, the command- the direction of the Viceroy of Peru,
er, pilot, nd the greater portion of the Font6 was said to have entered a large
crew, had fallen victims to the scurvy, river, called by him Rio de los Eeyes, or
ami l.e'n consigned to the bosom of that River of Kings, and, after a long voyage
great unknown ocean, whose mysteries inland, to have entered an immense lake
they were endeavoring to explore. called Lake Belle. He continued east
The next intimation of there being a from Lake Belle, through Parmentier
large river in this region came a cen- river, Lake Fonte" and the Straits of
tury later, through the French explor- Ronquillo, into the Atlantic, returning
era, who jH-netrated the region about the by the rame route. Little did the au
headwatera of the Mississippi, during thor of this romance dream that the con"
he cU.ng years of the seventeenth cen- tinent, in the latitude assigned to this
turj an the fi.t half of the eighteenth, wonderful series of riversS lake w
Ioru or nearly all these early French Yet, absurd as this storv is in the imbt
P Um -the fact that beyond the of our present kiTl
S r:t::r the ca,,ed the raphyf
diau
calltvl thp Ioifirt 1 ?na though the archives of neither Mex-
liCzz 7'lr 7 Spain
from .Ufferent trilw .,! u 1, r ' ?, mA ,0W. any admiralty
i I Z'ZiZ ? T T ' FnM' mP hereafter had
ffNW WUud d 111 T heE'TW0 Ki0 added to the other
-.tro.m,hlwZJeth,e ame8S6d to g-ate great stream
z trr! toTr:-- " the pflcifi0 ,rom the
BiW Th,W0 . r,?1 W-itarrib, Captain Jonathan Car-
"! Hi. tin,., .Uo, ,,. Ifench were compelled to withdraw
t tbi, undiC " I0 '?? tte Mississippi region, at the close
bbd n . rom " T J began an
" " b .'eb or 2 till that time
rnK.rWOT)r "" t PuSiT fr " Anglo-Saxon foot
",ve 6one as far west th Rod ri.