The information imparted in the foregoing extract brings the whole gist of the important discovery within the compass of a few paragraphs, and it will be readily seen from this clear description of the new-found lake that the source of the Mississippi is at last correctly located. Many others have attempted to find it: Schoolcraft was sent out by the Government especially for its discovery, but it remained for Captain Glazier to successfully accomplish an undertaking which had hitherto baffled the most determined explorers. This, too, he did entirely at his own expense, and with no other motive than such as an ardent search after truth inspires in ambitious minds. He had long doubted that Itasca was the source of our greatest river. He knew no other way of satisfying his doubt than by going himself to the remotest headwaters of the mighty stream. He therefore went there, for with him to think is to determine, to determine is to act. Friends tried to persuade him he was engaging in a useless and extravagant expedition, and those to whom he applied for information respecting the country through which he must pass warned him that he would have to undergo many hardships; but to all this advice he turned a deaf ear. His active, energetic, and enterprising temperament was proof against all fear of discomfort, and his desire to know the truth overruled every other feeling. And, when at last he stood by the beautiful lake, the goal of his search, all the trials and annoyances of his arduous journey sank into insignificance--lost in the depths of his content. His companions gazed with delight upon the peaceful scene which lay before them; and, as they noted the peculiar outline of the lake, what wonder that the thought came--this was indeed the heart of the Mississippi, pulsating with life for the great stream flowing onward and ever onward, enriching and ennobling the land, until at last it loses itself, by reason of its own vastness, in the waters of the Ocean. They rejoiced, too, that the first white man to stand at the fountain-head of America's greatest river was an American--an American who had fought bravely and suffered many privations for his country. And as they watched the eagle, whirling in his flight over their heads, they felt glad that he had chosen this spot for his home, in which to rear his young in the same proud, free spirit which made him so fit an emblem for their glorious land.