Note IV-5 — Chapter IV · PIKE'S DISSERTATION ON LOUISIANA.[IV-1]

This wild notion was a pet of Pike's, which he indulged to the extent of embodying it in the title of his book, and making his map fit it. No man can go, afoot or on horseback, in anything like one day, from any possible position, to the sources of all those rivers. It can be taken as an indication of the really close approximation of certain pairs of rivers, which drain from opposite sides of the same range, or made elastic enough to suit the situation about Mt. Lincoln, where some heads of the Grand, the Arkansaw, and the South Platte approximate; but the other rivers are entirely out of the question. Owing to Pike's ignorance of the existence of the North Platte, all that he says in various places of his hypothetical Yellowstone comes nearer the facts in the case of the Platte. "La Platte" he only knew from the sources of the South Platte.