CHAPTER XIII.
LITERARY WORK.
Description of the Missouri River - Father De Smet's map - Fauna and Flora - Indian history and traditions - Origin of Father De Smet's letters - Methods of writing - Unfounded aspersions - Literary records and data - The Linton album - Father De Smet's style - List of publications.
Father De Smet's writings are a distinct contribution to human knowledge. They abound in descriptions of the regions through which he passed, and although this information has been superseded by the more thorough work of later years, it served a useful purpose in its time. A particular example of his descriptive work is found in his notes upon the Missouri river, its tributaries, scenery, characteristics, navigation, etc. Very few, except pilots, knew that river as well as he, and they only knew its channel, while he was acquainted with its whole wonderful valley and with the wild inhabitants who occupied it. He had been at its very source in Red Rock lake on the Continental Divide and he had passed over every foot of its length except the distance between the Three Forks and Sun river in Montana. The information which he has left us on this subject will always possess a high- historic value.
He made an early observation in regard to Great Salt lake which later researches have fully verified. " The lake, which is now only seventy miles long and thirty-five wide, probably filled, at a remote epoch, the whole valley. On all sides, on the slopes of the mountains, at a uniform height, are traces which water alone could have made." The Quaternary Lake Bonneville of the scientists filled a large part of the Great Basin and overflowed to the north into Snake river, making the watershed of the lake, geologically at least, a part of the Coiumbia Basin.