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to examinations for apothecary, on condition that Latin has been an obligatory subject.

VI. That of a pro-gymnasium, 1o, to admission to the examination for apothecary; 2°, to admission to industrial technical schools.

VII. That of a higher-burgher school, 1°, to attend an industrial or technical school; 2°, to nomination for junior clerkships in the law courts; 3o, to admission to the examinations for art teachers; 4°, to admission to the high school for music in Berlin; 5°, to nomination for junior posts in the post-office.

The high schools are supported by the state, by the commune, or by both. If supported by the state alone, they are known as royal high schools. In the budget for 1885-86 the state subsidy for the high schools amounted to 4,712,118 marks.

THE SOURCE OF THE MISSISSIPPI. THE readers of Science will recall our announcement a few weeks ago, of the despatch of an exploring party to the head waters of the Mississippi River to examine and locate all the streams and lakes tributary to Lake Itasca. Our explorers have now accomplished their task, and we have received from them a detailed report, and a map of the entire region, which includes the basin of Lake Itasca.

This map, which we have engraved on the scale of about one mile to the inch, divided into sections corresponding with the U. S. land-office surveys, is presented herewith. Other maps are also presented for the fuller explanation of the details of the report.

Preliminary to the report, it is proper that we should make some statement of the considerations which led to the despatch of this party. There have been a number of explorations and excursions to the head waters of the Mississippi during the present century. Of these, we have a more or less accurate record of the trip of Morrison in 1804; of Schoolcraft in 1832; of Nicollet in 1836; of Charles Lanman in 1846; of the Ayers in 1849; of William Bungo in 1865; of Julius Chambers in 1872; of A. H. Siegfried and his party in 1879; of W. E. Neal in 1880 and again in 1881; of Rev. J. B. Gilfillan and Professor Cooke in May, 1881; and of Captain Glazier in July, 1881. We also have the maps of the government surveyors who spent two weeks in this township in September and October, 1875, and the paper of Mr. O. E. Garrison, contributed by him to the tenth annual report of the State geological survey of Minnesota, for the year 1880.

Of these explorers, we know that Nicollet carefully explored all the feeders of Lake Itasca; that

Chambers explored Elk Lake, which he called Lake Dolly Varden; and that Messrs. Gilfillan, Cooke, and Morrison, proceeding from the south, also visited the sources of the lake lying in that direction. Therefore, as to the general facts regarding the size and character of the basin of the lake, we did not hope to add any considerable amount of information to that already possessed. But of all these parties of explorers and surveyors, it is safe to say, that, with the exception of Nicollet and the government land-office surveyors, there has been little attempt at accurate investigation. Only these two have added any thing material to what Schoolcraft told the world in 1832. It is well, therefore, to note the difference in methods, of these two principal explorations of the Itasca basin.

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"Nicollet was a trained scientist, but he worked under limitations; and very sensibly, also, with a limited and definite purpose. His work was mainly done alone, and his chief instruments were the thermometer, the barometer, the sextant, and the compass. Hence he gives us details of temperature, elevation, latitude, longitude, and the general direction of the parts he visited. He rarely used the chain - if, indeed, he carried such a piece of property. His details of distance were either estimated as in the case of a day's tramp or of an object within sight — or figured out by mathematical rules, as when he computed the length of a section of the river from the data of the latitude, longitude, and the direction from each other of a given number of points in its course. Hence his outline of the course of a river or creek, or of the form of a lake or pond, was only as accurate as might be expected from a trained explorer, whose eye was accustomed to take in and measure distance, direction, and form, on a large scale, and under a thousand varying conditions. In the matter of general relief forms, and the general trend and drainage of the country, he was, without doubt, the best equipped and most competent single explorer who has undertaken the study of our country; and his work has been of inestimable value to hundreds of thousands who never heard of his name. So far as relates to the subdivision of areas, and the surveying and platting of the surface of the land, considered as a horizontal plane, his work did not profess to have any accuracy or value whatever.

"On the other hand, this last is the chief, if not the only, object of the government land surveyors. Their instructions are limited and specific. They take no note whatever of relief forms: they follow up and trace only the streams and ponds intercepted by the boundary-lines of sections. In the matter of horizontal area, in the meandering

of lakes and navigable streams, and in the general platting of the land, they are proverbially reliable; but there is absolutely no account taken of elevation, and the drainage or trend of the land can only be inferred from the course and direction of the streams encountered in running the section lines.

"Nicollet's exploration was made in 1836, before a surveyor's stake had been set within the limits of Minnesota. The government surveyors of 1875 perhaps never heard of Nicollet, and certainly had no thought of supplementing or verifying his work."

In addition to the discrepancy noted above, another element of uncertainty has been introduced by the effort to maintain the claims of Captain Glazier as the discoverer of a new lake, unknown before his visit to the Itasca region in 1881. In order to maintain this claim, it is necessary to set aside entirely the map of Nicollet, to discredit the work of the government surveyors, and to ignore Garrison, Siegfried, Gilfillan, and every other explorer who has been to this region during the last half-century. With a dozen trustworthy parties on one side, maintaining the general accuracy of Nicollet and the government land-office map, and with Captain Glazier and his friends alone on the other side, it was not difficult to decide where the truth lay. But as no one had yet attempted to make an accurate survey of the topographical features of this region in the light of a government survey, and as Nicollet's work was simply topographical, without any attempt at accurate platting of areas, there was plenty of room for Captain Glazier, or any one else who chose, to come in and advance all sorts of claims. If, as was claimed by Mr. Pearce Giles on behalf of Captain Glazier, there was found three or four miles south of Lake Itasca another tributary lake, two miles long and a mile and a half wide, this certainly could not be Elk Lake, or any other lake laid down in the government survey. But if, as described by another of his friends, Captain Glazier's lake was less than half a mile south of Lake Itasca, it was undoubtedly Elk Lake, the same that Nicollet shows, with its three feeders, on his map deposited in the office of engineers at Washington, the same that Chambers visited and named Dolly Varden in 1872, - the same that the government surveyors accurately outlined and named Elk Lake in 1875, - the same that the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan and Professor Cooke explored and named Lake Breck in May, 1881.

But it was not simply to prove or disprove the truth of Captain Glazier's claim, that we made this effort at an accurate topographical survey of this region. Nicollet has furnished us with a

map and a report of his explorations of the sources of the Mississippi, and these explorations have been a matter of history for fifty years. His maps have been public documents, accessible to everybody; and we believe, that, if his work is to be discredited, it should only be after the most careful and aceurate survey. The government surveyors also were charged with having entirely overlooked a lake of more than a square mile in extent, lying several miles south of Lake Itasca. If these government officers are not to be relied upon to give us accurate maps and honest service, it is time that the people should know it; it is time that geographers and map-makers should know it; and we knew of no way so satisfactory as a careful review of the work, both of Nicollet and of the government surveyors. And this review afforded us an opportunity to correct the one by the other, in case they were each reasonably correct in their respective fields of work.

We are glad to be able to report that the most careful running of the lines of the government surveyors have proved the almost absolute accuracy of their work. Our explorers were also able to detect and to account for some interesting minor inaccuracies of the land-office plat of this township; but it was well worth the making of the error to discover the remarkable natural phenomenon whereby this was fully explained. We refer to the underground passage of the stream on the section line between sections 21 and 22, by which the government surveyors were deceived, and led into thinking that the stream did not pass out of section 22 at all, but kept north through the western part of that section.

It is also a cause of satisfaction to find the substantial accuracy of Nicollet's report and map of this region. There are, it is true, manifest discrepancies between his lines and those of the government survey. Lake Itasca is much broader, Elk Lake much smaller, proportionally on his map than on the map of the government survey, and the latter is found to be correct. A large share of this variation is due to the fact that Nicollet made his surveys by the eye entirely, and many of his drawings of the course of the streams and the contour of lakes were made upon birchbark, and only transferred to paper afterwards. But beside this explanation, our explorers also found reason to believe that Itasca Lake was at one time several inches higher than it is now; and if, on the other hand, Elk Lake was once of a lower level than now, the two coming together would account for the difference in form they exhibited in 1836, as compared with their present outlines.

According to Mr. Gilfillan, the Indians called

Elk Lake, Gabukegumag, which means, 'water which juts off to one side' of another lake; that is, branches or projects out from it like a finger from a hand. This would indicate, that, when this name was given to it, Elk Lake was simply an arm or bay putting out from Lake Itasca, and that with the filling-up of the channel between the two, and the lowering of the level of Itasca, the difference in level, which amounts to only thirteen inches, contributed to make the one lake distinct from the other, and a feeder to it.

We may briefly sum up the results of this exploration to be:

1. The confirming of the substantial accuracy of the government survey.

2. The proof of the general correctness of Nicollet's report and map.

3. Nicollet's creek is still by far the largest affluent of Itasca, contributing about three-fourths of the regular perennial inflow of water. 4. It can be traced beyond the point to which Nicollet followed it to the lake that heads in section 34, Tp. 143 N., R. 36 W. 5th meridian; and at this point it is 92 feet above the level of Lake Itasca.

5. Following its windings, it is also the longest tributary of Lake Itasca; and therefore, 6. As the largest and longest tributary stream, and the one most elevated in its source, it is entitled to be called the upper course of the Mississippi.

7. Considerable changes have taken place in the nature of the streams in this region since the exploration of Nicollet, but these are all easily accounted for by natural causes. 8. The principal tributaries of Lake Itasca are fed by springs, artesian in their character, which have their reservoirs in the strata of the hills, and in lakes and ponds probably miles to the south and west.

9. There is no large lake directly tributary to Lake Itasca, five, four, three, or two miles, or even one mile south of that lake; and Elk Lake, whose shore is only a stone's throw from Itasca (350 feet), is the only tributary lake within the Itasca basin which has an area of more than 40 acres.

10. Elk Lake, with its feeders, is clearly shown on Nicollet's map of 1836-37. Its position is more accurately given than on Glazier's map; its distance from Itasca is much nearer to truth; and as to its size, Nicollet has drawn it about as much too small as Glazier drew it too large.

11. Captain Glazier has added nothing to what Nicollet's map presents to us. On the other hand,

12. Glazier shows us nothing of Nicollet's creek which is the main tributary of Itasca ; nothing of the eastern feeder of Elk Lake, which is the main source of its waters; nothing whatever that is not misleading and worse than worthless.

But what is the use of seriously going over this subject? Whatever of merit or accuracy there is in Captain Glazier's map is not in the slightest degree due to any thing done by him, or to any erudition possessed by his guide, Che-no-wa-ge-sic. His map, as he has published it, was drawn and engraved by Mr. G. Woolworth Colton of this city, and was made as near like the government surveys as Captain Glazier would permit.

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The public will never be permitted to gaze upon the miserable travesty on geography and map-making which Glazier took to Mr. Colton to be doctored up and put in shape. But it will be interested to read Mr. Colton's account of how he became the innocent accessory of the Glazier fraud. The following is an extract from a published letter of Mr. Colton, to be found in the American canoeist for November, 1886:

"When Glazier came to me in the fall of 1882 with his very rough map, to talk of his claim and to give us the geographical data for adding his streams and lake to our maps, I saw at once that

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THE ITASCA LAKE REGION, REDUCED FROM THE OFFICIAL PLATS IN THE U. S. GENERAL LAND-OFFICE, WASHINGTON, D. C., AS SURVEYED IN SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER, 1875.

he was claiming what did not belong to him, and so told him. Then I referred to my copy of U. S. land surveys (of which I copy every one that enters the general land-office in Washington, on a scale of one mile to one inch, with my own hand), and showed him, under date of March 20, 1876, my copy of sectionized plats, covering not only the region referred to, Nos. 142 and 143, N. R., 36 W., 5th Pm. mer., but all the rest of the area covered by his route to and from the lake. He expressed surprise at the facts shown him, and said he regretted exceedingly that he had not known them before he went, for such maps would have helped him greatly in determining many questions of geography, etc. He concluded to

have his maps engraved, and requested me to add some things and correct others, such as the form and proportion of lakes, etc., and to make more general resemblance to facts, only he insisted on having what he calls Lake Glazier much larger than the meandered exhibits on the L. O. plats. The result of my attempts to improve his draught was to make the resemblance to facts greater, and at the same time, as now appears, to give greater strength to his claim of exploration, and to accurate knowledge on the part of his guide."

And now, finally, to settle once for all the worth of Captain Glazier's claim, Mr. Bartlett Channing Paine comes into court, and, as state's

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THE ITASCA LAKE REGION, AS SURVEYED BY HOPEWELL CLARKE, CHIEF OF THE I. B. T. & CO. EXPEDITION, OCTOBER, 1886.

evidence, gives the following testimony in a recent interview in the St. Paul Pioneer press:

"I wanted to avoid this controversy, but I suppose I might as well tell you whatever I can. Yes, I accompanied Mr. Glazier on his journey at a stipulated salary per week. I went along to write up the incidents of the trip. I suppose Mr. Glazier's object in taking me along was to give a more extended notoriety through what matter I might furnish the press. When we left for the starting-point of our journey, our objective point was Lake Itasca. Glazier had no idea of exploring any lake beyond that point. The idea first entered his head when we were part way between Brainerd and Leech Lake. There

we met an old man who told us that Itasca was not the farthest lake, and that there was another one a little beyond Itasca. Glazier then began inquiring among the Indians, and he finally found one who seemed to know all about this lake. He had, according to his story, grown potatoes on the bank of the lake. That settled it: so Captain Glazier decided to see this lake. We struck Lake Itasca about halfway up the southeast arm, and paddled to Schoolcraft's Island. Next day we made our camp a short distance from the end of the south-west arm to the lake that the Indians had told us about. Glazier was greatly delighted with the lake. We sailed around it till we came to the promontory shown in the map. There the captain made a great speech about the

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