Note I-32 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: ST. LOUIS TO ST. PAUL, AUGUST 9TH-SEPTEMBER 21ST, 1805.

At 4 m. above Cordova, Pike passed on the left or Iowan side a river whose name is perhaps the most remarkable thing about it: Wabisapencun, Pike's map; Wabisipinekan, Pike's text, further on; Wabisapincun, Lewis and Clark's map of 1814; Wapisipinacon, Long's; Wabezipinikan, Nicollet's; Wabesapinica, Featherstonhaugh's; Wapsipinicon, Owen's and U. S. Eng'rs'; Wapsipinecon, G. L. O. No two original authors agree, and when one tries to copy another he is liable to be foiled by his printer. But the river runs on just the same, through several Iowan counties, on a general S. E. course, approximately parallel in most of its extent with Red Cedar r. It also does duty as the boundary between Scott and Clinton cos., Ia., along most of their apposed extent. There are several islands about its mouth; one of them is called Adams. Opposite the mouth of the W——n r., for a space of about 8 m. along the Illinois side of the Mississippi, the hills recede, leaving a low place in which the body of water known as Marais d'Osier, or Lake Willowmarsh, is situated: see Pike's map, in the interval between his "High Prairie" (ending at Cordova) and his "Rocky Hills" (beginning about Albany). Beltrami, II. 196, calls this Marais d'Ogé, and says it was "inhabited by a savage of the same name"! Beltrami's bosom friend, Major Long, has a still more startling rendition of the phrase, as Mer a Doge, in Minn. Hist. Coll., II. Part 1, 1860, 2d ed. 1890, p. 67. It appears as Mare de Oge on an Illinois atlas before me. From Le Claire to Albany is 18 m.; Pike probably did not get quite so far as this, but for convenience of keeping tally we will assume that he did, and set him on the lower point of the great Beaver isl. (No. 291), at the mouth of Comanche slough, directly opposite Albany, Whiteside Co., Ill.; nearest place on the other side is Comanche or Camanche, Clinton Co., Ia. Beaver isl. is 3 m. long, and extends up to Clinton, the county seat.