On the occasion of his interview with the President he brought up the matter of the Blackfoot annuities, explicitly charging that these goods had been wrongfully disposed of and had not reached their proper destination. Lincoln sent for the proper officer of the Indian Department to hear La Barge’s accusation. This officer stated that he had receipts signed by the Indian chiefs saying that they had received their annuities. The signatures of the Indians were witnessed by agents of the American Fur Company. La Barge declared that the receipts were false; that he had himself carried these goods and knew that the Indians had not received them, but that they had been appropriated by the American Fur Company and sold. “Well,” said the official, “there are the receipts; we cannot go back of them; they have been considered final evidence in such cases since the foundation of the government.” And there the matter rested. While in Washington on this visit La Barge was summoned before the Senate Committee on Pacific railroads and questioned by B. Gratz Brown upon his knowledge of the Western country and his opinion upon the availability of certain routes for a transcontinental line. [Sidenote: LOOK AT YOUR MAP.] Before he left Washington the Captain was the central figure in an amusing little incident that occurred at Ford’s Theater. _Harper’s Weekly_ had published a story of La Barge’s steamboating experiences which ran something like this: On one of his trips up the river in the earlier part of his career there were several Englishmen aboard. They had a map and applied themselves industriously for the first day or two in trying to identify the various places upon it with those along their route. They were in the pilot-house a good deal, and one of them questioned La Barge rather officiously about the geography of the country. “What place is this that we are approaching, Mr. Pilot?” he asked. “St. Charles, sir,” La Barge replied. “You are mistaken, sir; according to the map it is ----” La Barge made no reply. He stopped as usual at St. Charles and then went on his way. Presently they came to another village. “What place, Captain?” inquired the Englishman. “Washington, Mo., sir.” “Wrong again. The map gives this place as ----.” This experience was gone through several times, the Captain’s temper becoming more ruffled with each repetition, though no one would have suspected it from his unruffled exterior. Presently a flock of wild geese passed over the river and drew the attention of the passengers and crew. The Englishmen were standing on the hurricane roof immediately in front of the pilot-house. “What kind of birds are those, Captain?” asked one of them in eager haste. The Captain, whose language still smacked somewhat of the French idiom, replied: “Look at your map; he tell you.”