France and England in North America; a Series of Historical Narratives � Part 3 by Parkman, Francis, 1823-1893

160 161 162 163 164 165 166

A word from our supporters: File extension PTB

The Discovery Of The Great West By Francis Parkman 1870 Preface.

Contents Introduction

Appendix. Index Introduction.

Discovery Of The Great West. The Discovery Of The Great West.

The Illinois Town.

Appendix. Appendix I.

The Map Of Galinee, 1670.

Appendix Ii. The Eldorado Of Mathieu Sagean.

The remarkable manuscript map of the Upper Mississippi, by Le Sueur, belongs to a period subsequent to the close of this narrative.

APPENDIX II.

THE ELDORADO OF MATHIEU SAGEAN.

Father Hennepin had among his contemporaries two rivals in the fabrication of new discoveries. The first was the noted La Hontan, whose book, like his own, had a wide circulation and proved a great success. La Hontan had seen much, and portions of his story have a substantial value; but his account of his pretended voyage up the "Long River" is a sheer fabrication. His "Long River" corresponds in position with the St. Peter, but it corresponds in nothing else; and the populous nations whom he found on it, the Eokoros, the Esanapes, and the Gnacsitares, no less than their neighbors the Mozeemlek and the Tahuglauk, are as real as the nations visited by Captain Gulliver. But La Hontan did not, like Hennepin, add slander and plagiarism to mendacity, or seek to appropriate to himself the credit of genuine discoveries made by others.

Mathieu Sagean is a personage less known than Hennepin or La Hontan; for, though he surpassed them both in fertility of invention, he was illiterate, and never made a book. In 1701, being then a soldier in a company of marines at Brest, he revealed a secret which he declared that he had locked within his breast for twenty years, having been unwilling to impart it to the Dutch and English, in whose service he had been during the whole period. His story was written down from his dictation, and sent to the minister Ponchartrain. It is preserved in he Bibliotheque Imperiale, and in 1863 it was printed by Mr. Shea. Sagean underwent an examination, which resulted in his being sent to Biloxi, near the mouth of the Mississippi, with instructions from the minister that he should be supplied with the means of conducting a party of Canadians to the wonderful country which he had discovered; but, on his arrival, the officers in command, becoming satisfied that he was an impostor, suffered the order to remain unexecuted. His story was as follows:--