CONjECTURES of the Land beyond the Apalataean Mountains.
THey are certainly in a great errour, who imagine that the Continent of North-America is but eight or ten days journey over from the Atlantick to the Indian Ocean: which all reasonable men must acknowledge, if they consi∣der that Sir Francis Drake kept a West-Northwest course from Cape Mendocino to California. Nevertheless, by what I gathered from the stranger Indians at Akenatzy of their Voyage by Sea to the very Mountains from a far distant Northwest Country, I am brought over to their opinion who think that the Indian Ocean does stretch an Arm or Bay from California into the Continent as far as the Apala∣taean Mountains, answerable to the Gulfs of Florida and Mexico on this side. Yet I am far from believing with some, that such great and Navigable Rivers are to be found on the other side the Apalataeans falling into the Indian Ocean, as those which run from them to the Eastward. My first reason is derived from the knowledge and experience we already have of South-America, whose Andes send the greatest Rivers in the world (as the Amazones and Rio de la Plata, &c.) into the Atlantick, but none at all into the Pacifique Sea. Another Argument is, that all our Water∣fowl which delight in Lakes and Rivers, as Swans, Geese,