The information was communicated to the Government, with a suggestion that an expedition should be organized for visiting remoter regions the next year, and forwarding, at the same time, detailed estimates of the expenditures essential to its efficiency. These suggestions were approved by the Secretary of War on the 3d of May, 1832, and instructions forwarded to me for organizing an expedition to carry the reconnoissance and scrutiny to the tribes on the sources of the Mississippi. A small escort of U. S. infantry was ordered to accompany me, under Lieut. James Allen, U. S. A., who, being a graduate of the West Point Military Academy, undertook the departments of topography and trigonometry. I secured the services of Dr. Houghton, as physician and surgeon, and acting botanist and geologist--positions which he had occupied on the prior expedition of 1831. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions were invited to send an agent to observe the wants and condition of the Indian tribes in these remote latitudes; who directed the Rev. Wm. T. Boutwell to join me at St. Mary's. I charged myself especially with inquiring into the Indian history and languages, statistics, and general ethnography. The expedition left the Sault de Ste. Marie on the 7th of June, taking the route through Lake Superior to Fond du Lac and the St. Louis River, and the Savanna Summit to Sandy Lake, which lies 500 miles above St. Anthony's Falls of the Upper Mississippi. The width of the Mississippi at the outlet of Sandy Lake, by a line stretched across, was found to be 331 feet. At my camp here, a general council was summoned of the lower tribes, who were notified to assemble at the mouth of the River Des Corbeau on the 20th of July; and a boat with presents and supplies was sent down the Mississippi to await the return of the expedition through that river. Lightened thus of baggage, and having fixed a point of time within which to finish the explorations above, I proceeded up the main channel of the river to, and across the Pakagama Falls, and its wide plateau of savannas, and through the Little and Great Winnipek Lakes, to the Upper Red Cedar, or Cass Lake, which we entered on the 10th of July. This is a fine lake of transparent water, about eighteen miles in length, with several large bays and islands as denoted in the accompanying sketch, which give it an irregular shape. The largest island, called _Grande Isle_ by the French, which is the _Gitchiminis_ of the Indians, and the _Colcaspi_[154] of my initial narrative of 1832. This lake was the terminus of the respective explorations of Lieutenant Zebulon Pike, U. S. A., in 1806, and Governor Lewis Cass in 1820. The points at which they approached it were not, however, the same. Pike visited it in a dog train, on the snow, in the month of January, across the land, from the Northwest Company's trading post at Leech Lake. He visited an out-station of that company on Grand Island. Cass landed in