[62] June 10, 1673.
[63] I mean, of course, the upper Mississippi; for De Soto had reached it lower down one hundred and thirty-two years before.
[64] It was announced, some months since, that our minister at Rome, Mr. Cass, had made discoveries in that city which threw more light upon this expedition. But how this can be, consistently with the fact stated in the text (about which there is no doubt), I am at a loss to divine.
[65] The place of Marquette's landing—which should be classic ground—from his description of the country, and the distance he specifies, could not have been far from the spot where the city of Keokuk now stands, a short distance above the mouth of the Des Moines. The locality should, if possible, be determined.
[66] It was by virtue of a treaty of purchase—signed at Fort Stanwix on the 5th of November, 1768—with the Six Nations, who claimed the country as their conquest, that the British asserted a title to the country west of the Alleghenies, Western Virginia, Kentucky, etc.
[67] The geographical mistakes of the early French explorers have led to some singular discussions about Western history—have even been used by diplomatists to support or weaken territorial claims. Such, for example, is the question concerning the antiquity of Vincennes, a controversy founded on the mistake noticed in the text. Vide Western Annals. 2d Ed. Revised by J. M. Peck.
[68] In 1541, De Soto crossed the Mississippi about the thirty-fifth parallel of latitude, or near the northern boundary of the state of that name. It is not certain how far below this Marquette went, though we are safe in saying that he did not turn back north of that limit.
[69] Bancroft's History of the United States, vol. iii., p. 161, et seq., where the reader may look for most of these dates.