Page:The first and last journeys of Thoreau - lately discovered among his unpublished journals and manuscripts 2.djvu/58

 them at their roost, four miles off. At Fort Ridgely by evening. Noticed the azure larkspur (white), a plant which I saw at St. Paul; also the great ragweed (Ambrosia trifida,—commonly seen in the edge of the dry banks,—not yet out. This is said by Parry to be very luxuriant in the Mississippi bottom).

So attentive was Thoreau in his readings of the French Canadian writer, that what he said in his letter of June 26, 1861, in regard to that lively Gascon baron, Louis de L'Arce, lord of Hontan and Erleich, may here be cited, since he was probably right in his guess:

In short, the Minnesota River proved so very long and navigable, that I was reminded of the last letter or two in the Voyage of the Baron la Hontan (written near the end of the seventeenth century, I think), in which he states that, after reaching the Mississippi by the Illinois or Wisconsin,—the limit of previous exploration westward,—he voyaged up it with his Indians, and at length turned up a great river which he calls &quot;Long River.&quot;