Note 107 — Chapter I · (continued 2)

Coxe’s Carolana, p. 118. The writer of an article in the North American Review, January, 1839, entitled “Early French Travellers,” says: “An examination of contemporary writers and the town records has failed to lend a single fact in support of the Doctor’s tale.” Cf. H. H. Bancroft, Northwest Coast, i. 122, 123. [The French as traders and missionaries easily gained a familiarity with the Valley of the Mississippi, before agricultural settlers like the English had passed the Alleghanies. There had, however, been some individual enterprises on the part of the English. Coxe claims that under the grant to Sir Robert Heath, in 1630, of the region across the continent between 31° and 36°, Colonel Wood and a Mr. Needham explored the Mississippi Valley between 1654 and 1664, and that during the later years of that century other explorers had thridded the country.—Ed.].