IN FINE ENGLISH CLOTH 75 CENTS. SENT POST PAID ON RECEIPT OF PRICE. For either of the above books address, W. W. WILLIAMS, 145 ST. CLAIR STREET, CLEVELAND, O. [Illustration: Arthur St. Clair] Magazine of Western History. VOL. I. NOVEMBER, 1884. NO. 1 DISCOVERY OF THE OHIO RIVER BY LA SALLE, 1669–70. What is designated on the early maps of the United States as the “Territory Northwest of Ohio” embraced all the country east of the Mississippi and north of the Ohio River. Great Britain acquired it from France by the treaty of February, 1762, but, having prior claims to it, had before that time granted most of the territory to her several colonies. Probably there were not more than three thousand white people in the territory when this treaty was signed, and these were principally wandering French traders; very few of them cultivators of the soil. In 1778 Virginia conquered the northwest from Great Britain, and erected the entire territory into a county, by the name of Illinois. Soon after the close of the War of the Revolution, in the year 1787, the United States established in the same region its first provincial government, and gave it the above title, which in common parlance was known as the “Northwestern Territory.” Its fixed population did not then exceed five thousand. There are now five States, and the half of a sixth, whose inhabitants number not far from 10,000,000, among whom the French element is scarcely perceptible. The people of these States are intelligent, and take a lively interest in the history of the discoverers of their country, among whom La Salle holds the first place. Having spent a life of the length usually allotted to man, on the waters of the Ohio, the Upper Mississippi, and the lakes, threading many of the streams on which they floated their canoes, passing over the same trails, coasting along the same shores, those intrepid explorers of two centuries since, have often been, in imagination, vividly near to me. As early as 1840 I saw evidence of the presence of white men in northeastern Ohio, of whom we had then no historical proof. This evidence is in the form of ancient cuts, made by sharp axes on our oldest forest trees, covered by their subsequent growth. In this climate the native trees are endogenous, and take on one layer of growth annually. There are exceptions, but I have tested the accuracy of this habit, in about forty cases where I have had other proof of the age of the tree, and find it to be a good general rule.