Narrative of a Journey in the Prairie
By Albert Pike

from
PUBLICATIONS OF
The Arkansas Historical Association
Edited by
JOHN HUGH REYNOLDS, Secretary
Vol.4
CONWAY, ARKANSAS 1917

Submitted by Dena Whitesell
pg 66 NARRATIVE OF A JOURNEY IN THE PRAIRIE. (By Albert Pike.)

The world of prairie which lies at a distance of more than three hundred miles west of the inhabited portions of the United States, and south of the river Arkansas and its branches, has been rarely, and parts of it never trodden by the foot or beheld by the eye of an Anglo-American. Rivers rise there in the broad level waste, of which, mighty though they become in their course, the source is unexplored. Deserts are there, too barren of grass to support even the hardy buffalo; and in which water, except in here and there a hole, is never found. Ranged over by the Cumanches, the Pawnees, the Caiawas, and other equally wandering, savage, and hostile tribes, its very name is a mystery and a terror. The Pawnees have their villages entirely north of this part of the country, and their war parties—always on foot—are seldom to be met with to the south of the Canadian, except close in upon the edges of the white and civilized Indian settlements. Extending on the south to the Rio del Norte, on the north to a distant unknown, eastwardly to within three or four hundred miles of the edge of Arkansas Territory, and westwardly to the Rocky Mountains, is the range of the Cumanches. Abundantly supplied with good horses from the immense herds of the prairie, they range, at different times of the year, over the whole of this vast country. Their war and hunting parties follow the buffalo continually. In the winter they may be found in the south, encamped along the Rio del Norte, and under the mountains; and in the summer on the Canadian and to the north of it, and on the Pecos. Sometimes they haunt the Canadian in the winter, but not so commonly as in the summer.

It is into this great American desert that I wish to conduct my readers—first solemnly assuring them that what I am about to relate is perfectly the truth, and that nothing is exaggerated or extenuated in the narration.

In the month of September, 1831, Aaron B. Lewis residing at the time near Fort Towson, on Red river, in the territory of Arkansas, was induced to undertake a journey to the province of New Mexico, allured by the supposed immense riches in that country and the opportunity which he imagined there was in making a fortune there. He looked upon New Mexico as a sort of Utopia, a country where gold and silver were abundant and easily obtained. In short, his ideas of it were precisely such as the word Mexico generally suggests to the mind. Neither has he been alone in his delusion. With a blindness unaccountable, men still continue rushing to Santa Fe, as if fortunes were to be had there for the asking. Men who by hard and incessant labor have amassed a little money, laying that out to the last farthing, and in addition, mortgaging perhaps their farms to obtain farther credit, convey the goods thus obtained to Santa Fe, hoping thus and there to gain a fortune, notwithstanding they have seen numbers returning poor and impoverished, after starting, as they are doing, with high hopes and full wagons. Here and there an individual, by buying beaver or trading to Sonora and California for mules, returns home a gainer, but generally the case is far otherwise.

Lewis, however, was far from knowing all this, and accordingly on the 3d of September, 1831, with a good horse, ammunition and blankets he left the United States, and bent his course to the mountains. He left Arkansas in company with two other Americans and eleven Cherokees, who were headed by a chief commonly called Old Dutch, and whose object was hunting and trapping on the Fausse Washita. Besides these, there was a young doctor by the name of M?mro, and his wife, who were to accompany Lewis to New Mexico. Chambers, one of his companions, was a middle-sized young man, a very good fellow on the prairie, but of very little use there. George Andrews, the other, was a big, obstinate cowardly Dutchman, of no use to himself or anyone else, and of no character except a bad one. Lewis himself is a large, very large and tall man, red-faced, of undaunted bravery, coolness, and self-possession, an excellent hunter, and of constant good humor.

The course which they intended to pursue was then to follow the Fausse Washita to its head and then to cross the
Canadian, and follow it to the wagon road. As I shall have frequent occasion to speak of these rivers, I may as well at once give a description of them. No maps describe the Red river and the Colorado correctly. The Canadian fork of the Arkansas rises near the head of the Arkansas itself, runs south to within seventy miles of Taos, and then takes a course a little south of east. It is there called Red river by the Spaniards and traders. The North Fork of the Canadian heads about fifty miles to the northeast of Taos, in two hills, which are called by the Spaniards Las Orejas, and by the Americans, the Rabbit Ears. The North fork itself is called there Rabbit Ears creek. The Faussee Washita heads about three hundred miles to the east of Taos, in some prairie hills, and a man can travel in half a day from the head of the principal branch of it to the Canadian, at a large bend of the latter. Red river rises in the prairie not far south of Santa Fe, and between one and two hundred miles east of it. The heads of it are salt, and, as well as the Colorado, it has a wide sandy bed, and but little water, until it reaches nearly to the Cross Timbers, within three hundred miles of the settlements of the whites. I shall describe the Colorado or the Brazos hereafter.

I have never seen the Fausse Washita far above the Cross Timbers. It is above them, a small clear stream of water, always running. Where I crossed it, it was perhaps one hundred yards wide, deep and with not very bluff banks. Above this it is bordered by a strip of timber, generally from one eighth to a quarter of a mile wide, and on the outside of this, a prairie bottom half a mile, and in some places a mile wide, of exceedingly rich land. These bottoms extend to the distance of more than a hundred and fifty miles above the Cross Timbers. It is indeed the best hunting ground of the west for deer, buffalo, and bear, and the trees are abundantly stored with delicious honey. The timber is chiefly oak, walnut, and pecan, and close to the bank cottonwood and sycamore.

Of the early part of this route—that is, from Fort Towson to the Cross Timbers—Lewis can give but a vague and confused account. Most of the time he was sick, and in addition to this, the Cherokees, whose purpose was hunting, loitered along so slowly—killing deer as they went and accommodated their course so constantly to this pursuit—that there could be but little possibility of remembering the route distinctly. What I know about it is derived rather from my own passage through the same part of the country than from that of Lewis. Leaving Fort Towson, as before stated, on the 3d of September, they took the road, which crossing the Kiamiche, goes on to the ford of Boggy—a branch of Red river, running into it below the Washita. The country is beautifully diversified—hills covered with oak and hickory, rolling prairies with their tall swarthy grass waving in the wind, and here and there creek bottoms, flush with greenness. In parts, however, the country has a bleak and barren appearance, which becomes much more marked when the sun scorches up the prairies, and the hot fire runs over them leaving only bleak, black and barren wastes, undulating in gloomy loneliness, and here and there spotted with a clump of trees, leafless, grey and gnarled, perhaps scorched with the fire which has gone over the prairie.

As they proceeded farther to the west, the prairies became larger, and bore in a greater degree that look of stern silence which hardly ever fails.to impress itself on anyone who first enters a plain to which he can see no bounds. Crossing Boggy at the ford below the Forks, just beyond which the road lost itself in the prairie, they kept on to the ford of the creek called Blue, or Blue-Water—crossed it, and in a few days entered the hills of the Fausse Washita, on the north side of that river—high, broken, and precipitous elevations, in which they were entangled for the space of two or three days. Where I afterward passed through these hills, they are devoid of timber; but where Lewis went through on his outward trip, they were, generally, thickly covered with low scrub oaks and briers, forming, as it seemed, a portion of the Cross Timbers, into which they entered as soon as they left the hills. Passing through the Cross Timbers—in width there, about fifteen miles—they struck for the first time the Fausse Washita.

These Cross Timbers are a belt of timber, extending from the Canadian, or a little farther north, to an unknown distance south of Red river. The belt is in width from fifteen to fifty miles, composed of black-jack and post-oak, with a thick underbrush of small bushy oak, and briers, in places absolutely impervious. About this time Lewis lost his horse, which wandered off one night and was never found again. He was now, like Andrews and Chambers, on foot. Just beyond the Cross Timbers, Monro and his wife left him and returned to the white settlements, weary of the journey. It was well that they did so.

Fifty miles above the Cross Timbers, upon the Washita, and on the morning of the 12th of October, Lewis and his two companions parted from the Cherokees, though with the utmost reluctance on the part of the latter, who were urgent for thorn to remain and trap with them. /Thus . far there had been to them, and there is to any man, but little danger. The Pawnees are sometimes, but very seldom, found "below the Cross Timbers—the Cumanches never. Now, however, commenced the danger. The heads of the Washita and the western part of the Canadian are the homes of the latter tribe. It was not the nature, however, of either Lewis or Chambers to fear, and they, encumbered by Andrews, pushed boldly up the river. The country was now changed. On each side of the river, after leaving the bottom, there was a high, level, and dry prairie, where grass grows only to the height of two or three inches, and, by the month of October, is scorched, curled and grey, affording little or no sustenance to anything but the buffalo.

No man can form an idea of the prairie, from anything which he sees to the east of the Cross Timbers. Broad, level, grey and barren, the immense desert which extends thence westwardly almost to the shadow of the mountains, is too grand and too sublime to be imaged by the narrow contracted, undulating plains to be found nearer the bounds of civilization.

Imagine yourself, kind reader, standing in a plain to which your eye can see no bounds. Not a tree, nor a bush, not a shrub, not a tall weed lifts its head above the barren grandeur of the desert; not a stone is to be seen on its hard beaten surface; no undulation, no abruptness, no break to relieve the monotony; nothing, save here and there a deep narrow track worn into the hard plain by the constant hoof of the buffalo. Imagine then countless herds of buffalo, showing their unwieldy, dark shapes in every direction as far as the eye can reach, and approaching at times to within forty steps of you; or a herd of wild horses feeding in the distance or hurrying away from the hateful smell of man, with their manes floating, and a trampling like thunder. Imagine here and there a solitary antelope, or, perhaps, a whole herd, fleeing off in the distance like the scattering of white clouds. Imagine bands of white, snow-like wolves prowling about accompanied by the little grey prairie wolves, who are as rapacious and as noisy as their bigger brethren. Imagine, also, here and there a lonely tiger-cat, lying crouched in some little hollow, or bounding off in triumph, bearing some luckless little prairie dog which it has caught straggling about at a distance from its hole. If to all of this you add a band of Cumanches, mounted on noble swift horses, with their long lances, their quiver at the back, their bow, perhaps their gun, and their shield ornamented gaudily with feathers and red cloth, and round as Norva?s or as the full moon; if you imagine them hovering about in the prairie, chasing the buffalo or attacking an enemy, you have an image of the prairie, such as no book ever described adequately to me.

I have seen the prairie under all its diversities, and in all its appearances, from those which I have described to the uneven, bushy prairies which lie south of Red river, and to the illimitable State Prairie, which lies from almost under the shadow of the mountains to the heads of the Brazos and of Red river, and in which neither buffaloes nor horses are to be found. I have seen the prairie, and lived in it in summer and winter. I have seen it with the sun rising calmly from its breast, like a sudden fire flushing in its sky with quiet and sublime beauty. There is less of the gorgeous and grand character, however, belonging to them, than that which accompanies the rise and set of the sun upon the ocean or upon the mountains; but there is beauty and sublimity enough in them to attract the attention and interest the mind.

I have seen the mirage, too, painting lakes and fires and groves on the grassy ridges near the bounds of the Missouri in the still autumn afternoon, and cheating the traveler by its splendor and deceptions. I have seen the prairie, and stood long and weary guard in it, by moonlight and starlight and storm. It strikes me as the most magnificent, stern, and terribly grand scene on earth—a storm in the prairie. It is like a storm at sea, except in one respect—and in that it seems to me to be superior. The stillness of the desert and illimitable plain, while the snow is raging over its surface, is always more fearful to me than the wild roar of the waves, and it seems unnatural—this dead quiet while the upper elements are so fiercely disturbed; it seems as if there ought to be the roll and the roar of the waves. The sea, the woods, the mountains, all suffer in comparison with the prairie— that is, on the whole—although in particular circumstances either of them is superior. We may speak of the incessant motion and tumult of the waves, the unbounded greenness and dimness, and the lonely music of the forests, and the high magnificence, the precipitous grandeur and the summer snow of the glittering cones of the mountains; but still, the prairie has a stronger hold upon the soul, and a more powerful if not so vivid an impression upon the feelings. Its sublimity arises from its unbounded extent, its barren monotony and desolation, its still, unmoved, calm, stern, almost self-confident grandeur, its strange power of deception, its want of echo, and in fine, its power of throwing a man back upon himself and giving him a feeling of lone helplessness, strangely mingled at the same time with a feeling of liberty and freedom from restraint. It is particularly sublime, as you draw nigh to the Rocky Mountains and see them shot up in the west, with their lofty tops looking like white clouds resting upon their summits. Nothing ever equaled the intense feeling of delight with which I first saw the eternal mountains marking the western edge of the desert. But let us return to Lewis.

After leaving the Cherokees, he and his companions kept up the Washita for eight days, until it became so small that they could step across it, and branched out into a number of small heads, coming down from different parts of the prairie. In those eight days they traveled two hundred and fifty miles. Lewis was loaded with his heavy gun, his saddle bags full of clothes, and generally from ten to forty pounds of buffalo meat. Game was abundant thus far, and they suffered nothing but fatigue.

Oct. 20—On this day, in the morning, they left the main Washita, now very small, and struck a course nearly west
two degrees north, through the prairie. After traveling in a treeless and broken prairie until midnight, they came upon a deep hollow, near the head of it, in which water was running towards the main Washita, and encamped under a big elm.

Oct. 21.—Started again, and traveled all day towards the dividing land between them and the waters of the Canadian, and at midnight came to the head of another hollow, similar to the one the night before. This Lewis takes to be the head of the longest branch of the Fausse Washita. From this head of the Washita, to the Cross Timbers is probably three hundred and forty miles, not calculating the bends of the river, but keeping a course nearly straight.

Oct. 22.—This morning they left the headwaters of the Washita, and after traveling about twenty miles in a course west two degrees north, they came upon a hollow; from which a little branch ran into the Canadian. All this day it rained. The country between the headwaters of the Washita and this part of the Canadian, is a high, broken, uneven prairie. Here they killed a bear, cut up the meat, and built a fire under it to dry and preserve it. This day I was traveling upon the Semaron, a branch of the Arkansas to the south, between it and the Canadian. I was in a company of thirty men guarding ten wagons.

Oct. 23.—This morning the adventurers left their camp, and kept their course for about four miles, when they struck the Canadian and crossed it, and in the evening, thinking that they would obtain no water, they altered their course, turned to the southwest, and, crossing the river again to the south, encamped on the bank. Lewis computes this' day's travel at eighteen miles.

Oct. 24.—Left camp, and traveled about six miles up the Canadian on the south side, then crossed it to the north and left it, keeping their regular course west, two degrees north. They soon came into high sand hills, and encamped at night, finding no water. About midnight Lewis insisted on starting and finding water, and they did so, and in the morning came upon a large creek running into the Canadian.

Oct. 25.—After staying an hour or two at the water, left it, and kept their course all day, and at night, owing to a large bend in the Canadian, they came upon it again, and encamped on the river. It had snowed all day, but ceased at sunset. This day our company reached the middle spring of the Semaron, and the last watch this night of eight hours belonged to me. Stood it without fire for three hours, and then built me a fire of the buffalo ordure which we had gathered for mess fuel. During my watch a horse froze to death.

Oct. 26.—They traveled all day again, and encamped at night on a small creek half a mile from the main river. The weather was very cold in the morning, but moderated toward night. Country as before, broken uneven prairie, covered with oak bushes, about a foot and a half high.

Oct. 27.—They traveled all day and encamped in the prairie, and melted snow in a tin kettle which Chambers carried. Still kept their course west, two degrees north.

Oct. 28.—Traveled all day, and encamped again in the prairie, at a hole where buffalo had been rolling, called by hunters, a buffalo wallow, and containing water.

Oct. 29.—Traveled all day and encamped on a little fork of clear water to the north—a branch probably of the Semaron or perhaps of the north fork of the Canadian.

Oct. 30.—Traveled all day, and at night encamped on another little fork running north.

Oct. 31.—Traveled all day in a high, barren, undulating prairie; found water once or twice during the day, but at night slept in the prairie without a drop. This is the beginning of what Lewis calls the water scrape.

Nov. 1.—Started in the morning early, and traveled all day without water; likewise traveled all night without rest or cessation.

Nov. 2.—High, barren prairie; all day no water. They traveled constantly and eagerly until about two of the afternoon on their course, and then changed it and traveled a due south course. Night came, but did not delay them, and it was not till the morning star rose, that, weary and tormented with thirst, they lay down and slept.

Nov. 3.—Towards day they arose, and started again, in a course still due south. About 10 in the morning, Lewis threw away his saddle-bags, pistols, blankets, and about forty weight of buffalo meat. Chambers had thrown his meat down the evening before, and Lewis had added it to his load. Early in the morning Chambers went ahead promising to keep the course, and whenever he reached water to return with a bucket full to Lewis and Andrews. After leaving them he saw an antelope, and went out of his course to kill it for the sake of drinking the blood. He thus lost the course and his companions. Towards evening Lewis killed an antelope and drank the blood. It drank like new milk, but increased the thirst ten fold. All night they kept slowly along the dry prairie without water, till about two hours before day, when they lay down and slept. Lewis had now become so weak as to be unable to shoulder his gun except by placing one end on the ground and getting under it; and he went staggering along through the prairie like one who had long been sick.

Nov. 4.—Started again at daylight, and proceeded slowly along the plain, and about the middle of the forenoon descried the high, broken country of the Canadian. About two of the afternoon they reached the river, almost exhausted. As Lewis drank he forced himself to vomit, and the water came from his stomach as cold as it entered it. He tells me that he is certain of having drunken at least three gallons of water. This day, after seeing the river, they fired the prairie, as a signal to Chambers. He saw it, but supposing it to proceed from Indians, was afraid to approach it. He struck the river early in the morning, about ten miles above the place where Lewis and Andrews came upon it.

Nov. 5 and 6.—Lay at the same place, in order to gather strength for traveling. Killed a fat cow.

Nov. 7.—They made preparations for going back to find the articles which they had thrown away. Lewis took four gallons and a half of water in a cased deerskin, which he had been carrying, and as Andrews insisted on going ahead and keeping the course, he allowed him to do so. In the afternoon, finding that they had lost their course, they returned to their camp again.

Nov. 8.—Started again this morning, Lewis going ahead and bearing the water. They traveled all day, and at night encamped in the prairie, with no water except what they bore with them.

Nov. 9.—Traveled still north until about noon, when, despairing of finding their property, and fearing to suffer again from thirst, they turned their course to the southwest and at night encamped on the head of a large creek running toward the main Canadian.

Nov. 10.—Followed the creek down for about ten miles, and encamped in a grove of cottonwood, on the same creek.

Nov. 11.—Left the creek and traveled west all day, until late in the evening; they struck the Canadian again, and saw Chambers track on the river bank. They had supposed him to be dead. From this to the sixteenth they kept up the river slowly, and Lewis has but a confused remembrance of this part of the trip. On the sixteenth it commenced raining in the morning, and finding a cave in the bluff bank, in which they could be sheltered, and rolling a large pine root to the mouth of it, they were very comfortable all night, though but poorly clad, and with no blankets. Lewis' dress consisted of a pair of linen pantaloons and a shirt, with a pair of deerskin moccasins. It hailed towards night severely, and about midnight cleared off very cold.

Nov. 17.—Started very late, and went down the creek about half a mile, and encamped again in a cottonwood grove, where Andrews killed, for the first time, something to eat, viz. a little "puck." All this day the cold was intense.

Nov. 18.—Started in the morning in a snowstorm, and traveled nearly all day. In the evening they encamped in a bleak place, and made a fire with cedar, which was thinly scattered about on the bluff banks of the river. The snow round the fire melted, and the mud was soon knee deep. When, during a lull in the storm, Lewis saw up the river about half a mile a grove of cottonwood, and proposed going and encamped there, George answered that " 'py cot' it was petter here as there, and he would not co." "Stay, then," was the answer of Lewis, and taking his gun and a brand of fire, he went on, but had not proceeded more than a hundred yards, when looking back he saw Andrews puffing along behind him. They soon made a large fire, raked away the snow and sat out the night by their fire—comfortable—as Lewis says.

I met this storm at the Point of Rocks, about sixteen miles to the northeast of the Canadian, at the crossing of the wagon road under the mountain. This Point of Rocks is a high ridge of mountain, which, dividing at this place, and jutting out into the prairie in three spurs, ends abruptly, making a high and imposing appearance in the boundless plain in which they stand. Between these three points two canons run up into the bosom of the ridge—(by which word canon the Spaniards express a deep, narrow hollow among the mountains). We arrived here on the eighteenth after the first storm, and seeing indications of another approaching, we encamped early, running our wagons in a straight line across the mouth of the northern canon. Our mess pitched our tent on the south end of the line—fronting the line—and we then employed ourselves all the afternoon in cutting and bringing from the sides of the mountain the small, rough cedars, which grow there in abundance, and we soon gathered huge piles on the outside of the wagons. Our oxen and the one or two horses yet left were driven far up the hollow, and about ten of the evening I ascended the side of the hollow and stood guard two hours—which standing guard consisted in wrapping myself in a blanket and lying down under the lee of a rock. When my guard was off, Schench and myself retired to our tent, and I slept out the night under two buffalo robes and two blankets. He, poor fellow, is since dead.

Two or three hours before daylight, the storm commenced with terrific violence, and I never saw a wilder or more terrible sight than was presented to us when day came. The wind swept fiercely out of the canon, driving the snow horizontally against the wagons, and sweeping onward into the wide prairie, in which a sea of snow seemed raging.
Objects were not visible at a distance of twenty feet, and when now and then the lull of the wind permitted us to look farther out into the plain, it only gave us a wider view of the dim desolation of the tempest. There was small comfort at the fires, immense though they were; for as gust after gust struck the wagons, the snow blew under them and piled around us, while the cold seemed every moment to increase in intensity. For some time in the morning we were crowded together in our tent, but while eating our breakfast in it the pins gave way and we were covered with snow.

We then pitched it again in the lee of the wagons, with its mouth to the prairie. In the evening we all turned out, although the cold was hardly supportable, and cut and carried wood to a sheltered place on the side of the mountain, where our sapient captain had directed us to stand guard. We then stuffed boughs of cedar under the wagon, in the lee of which our mess fire was built, and also built us a shelter at each end of the wagon, and managed to enjoy some small degree of comfort.

Nov. 19.—We left the Point of Rocks, in spite of the deep snow and the intense cold, leaving also some six or eight oxen frozen to death, and although I ran backward and forward in the track of the wagons all day, still I froze my feet before I stopped at night. Such was the weather in which Lewis and Andrews lay without a blanket or coat by the fire in the open air. There is but small comfort in the prairie in such a storm, even when a man has blankets and clothes in abundance; but when he is nearly naked, and sits all the long night shivering by the fire which is the only barrier between him and death, it requires the greatest fortitude to bear the feelings of utter misery and desolation which throng upon the heart.

Lewis and Andrews traveled this morning four or five miles, and stopped in a grove of cottonwood. After making a fire, Andrews shot a turkey, and called to Lewis to run and catch it. Lewis did so, and was hotly engaged in pursuit of the turkey, when he came upon an old buck, and shot him. Andrews, however, was enraged, and "would rather have his turkey as fifty pucks."

Nov. 20.—This day Lewis left the Canadian, and followed a small southern branch of it which heads within five miles of the junction of the Demora and Sepellote (branches likewise of the Canadian), which junction takes place on the wagon road, within fifty miles of San Miguel, and within fifteen miles of the Gallinas branch of the Pecos, which is itself a branch of the Del Norte.

The progress, of Lewis was now slow, owing to Andrews who pretended great fatigue and incapability of walking. They traveled this day about six miles, and encamped in a cliff of rocks on the creek.
Nov. 21.—This day they ascended the first bench of mountain, and came into prairie again; traveled about ten miles in the whole, and found water in a hollow rock.

Nov. 22—They started, aiming to go to a.long mountain covered with timber, which lay in the course. In the afternoon Lewis saw a piece of timber to the left, and thinking it impossible to reach the timbered hill, proposed going and encamping in the nearest timber. Andrews was, as Lewis expressed it, "for fooling along, and killing antelope." They held a long confab, and at length Andrews agreed to go to it. But after turning towards the timber and proceeding a short distance, they saw a smoke in it, and Andrews again, refused to go thither, alleging that it was Indians; and Lewis, enraged, went on without him, saying that he would go thither if there were five hundred Indians in the timber. Andrews followed. On arriving at the edge of the timber Lewis stopped, primed his gun anew, and picked the flint. Andrews by this time had come up, and observed with some surprise, "that Lewis did allow to fight" A little further and they saw a track. It was that of Chambers. They were within five steps of him before he knew it. He had always supposed them dead, but they had seen his track along at intervals, and even that day, going to the right of them. Reader, you can imagine their joy at meeting.
Chambers, as Lewis says, "never expected to get no place, and had only concluded to keep going till he died." He had killed a panther that night—after being encamped here a day or two—and all three now feasted on panther meat.

Nov. 23.—Lay by, in a snow storm.

Nov. 24.—Moved camp about half a mile to better timber, and encamped again. Our wagons in the meantime had crossed the Canadian, and were encamped about twenty miles beyond in a grove of pine timber, within seventeen miles of the foot of the first high mountain on the road to Taos.

Nov. 25.—The storm ceased, and the weather was intensely cold. This day Lewis and his small party moved two miles, and stopped for fear of freezing, encamping on the same little creek which I have mentioned before. This day a party of us left the wagons and went into Taos. The blue mist hung about the mountains, and gathered into icicles on our beards and blankets, and the snow was knee deep. The climate in which I was born is cold enough, but I never experienced anything equal to the cold of this day. All our party, except one or two froze their feet. This was the kind of weather in which Lewis traveled with a pair of linen pantaloons, a shirt, a deer skin on his breast with the hair in, and one on his back with the hair out, and a pair of thin moccasins. We this day traveled twenty-five miles, a part of which was up one of the highest mountains to be seen around us, and encamped in a grove of hemlock and pine, which the reader will hereafter find mentioned as the encamping ground of Lewis. There were two pack mules ahead of us, and we walked all day in their steps, which was the only path. It was no strange thing that Lewis could not travel.

Nov. 26.—Lewis this day traveled about four miles, and encamped in the snow on the head of a hollow in pine timber.

Nov. 27.—Our adventurers traveled this day about nine miles and came upon the waters of the Demora—that is, upon a small branch running towards this creek. This day our party from the wagons reached the foot of the last mountain on the road to Taos.

Nov. 28.—Lewis this day traveled all day, and gained about four miles. In the evening they killed an old buffalo and, finding his flesh too poor to be eaten, they cleansed and ate the entrails, encamping at night on the same branch of the Demora. This day, about ten in the evening, our party reached the still-house in the valley, within three miles of Taos.

Nov. 29.—This day they traveled about eight miles, and in the middle of the afternoon stopped on the main Demora, where, in a few minutes, Lewis killed two blacktailed deer. I have often mentioned these deer. They are larger than the deer which are found in the United States, and in fact, their skin is sometimes so large that it might be mistaken for an elk skin. They are of a darker color than our deer, more clumsily made, and not so fleet, neither is their flesh so good, but their skins are much better.

Nov. 30.—This day they lay by.

Dec. 1.—Directly after starting, they came upon the road at the junction of the Demora and Sepellote, which the reader will find mentioned hereafter as the place whence I went into San Miguel. Had Lewis continued on the Demora to the old village, and thence through the pass of the mountains, he would have found a broken trail, and would have gone in with much more ease. He wished to do so; Andrews, however, who had been in Taos before, and in fact had a wife there, assured him that they could not go in that way for the snow, but that they must go to a timbered hill which lay to the right and can be seen from the junction of the roads, and that beyond this they would find a mule path leading from the ford of the Canadian to San Fernandez. They accordingly traveled three or four miles in the direction of the timbered hill, and encamped.

Dec. 2.—Traveled this day three or four miles, and encamped on the timbered hill.

Dec. 3.—Traveled this day about the same distance upon the hill, and encamped on it again in a deep canon. While sitting in camp this morning, ready to start, two deer came running up towards them, and stopped. Lewis shot and brought one down, and was followed by Andrews who killed the other. Chambers and Andrews then insisted on stopping and eating, to the great anger of Lewis, who hated to lose time.

Dec. 4.—Traveled all day and encamped on the upper end of the mountain.

Dec. 5.—This morning Lewis issued the last meat, being a piece for each man about as large as his two fingers. The reader will remember that though they killed two deer, they were too weak to pack much of them. Andrews this morning alleged that he could carry his gun no farther, and that they must stop till he could rest a day or two and gain strength. What was to be done? Lewis was forced to lay by and starve, or carry his own gun and that of Andrews likewise. Either gun is extremely heavy. Andrews had long been burdensome by delaying his companions, and once Lewis had threatened to throw him into the fire, and would have .done so had he not, as Lewis calls it, "backed out." This day they reached a small creek within six miles of the foot of the mountain, which I have said we ascended on the twenty-fifth. The road goes by the creek, but the snow which had fallen after we went in had erased the tracks completely, and there was no vestige of a road.

Dec. 6.—Left Cache creek, and traveled toward the mountain. After ascending it about half way and coming upon a small platform on the side of it, Andrews insisted on encamping, and they did so. A fire was made, and they were standing by it, when Lewis observed that he still had a great mind to go on. "I wish that you would/' observed Andrews, "for then you could tell them to send for me." A word was enough for Lewis, and shouldering his gun and taking a brand of fire, he went on up the mountain alone.

He had a day or two before given his thin moccasins to Andrews, who complained bitterly of his feet, and he was himself now equipped with a pair made of the raw hide of a buffalo.
The few days' journey which are left now, I shall give in his own words; that is, as far as the words of an unlettered man can be written without giving the world cause for supposing that one is aiming at burlesque. If I retain his own peculiar phrases, it will be because he can express himself by them more forcibly than I can by any language of my own. Henceforward, then, the reader will understand him as speaking in the first person, and any remark which I have to make for the purpose of explanation, will be placed in parentheses.

After reaching the top of the mountain, I saw before me the wide prairie through which I had to travel about six miles to timber. My thin pantaloons were torn into strips everywhere, and there was hardly a place where you could put your finger down without touching flesh. Added to this, about ten inches of my legs above my moccasins were, entirely bare. The snow through the prairie was generally about to my middle, and whenever I missed the road, which was beaten hard underneath, though covered with soft snow above, then I took it plumb to my neck, and had all sorts of kicking to get out of it at all. The air kept growing colder as I went, and I thought that the timber receded. I was sure that some power or other was holding back my feet. My heart leaped when I got into the timber and heard the tall trees singing above me. I turned in and blowed up my chunk of fire, packed big logs and made a pretty good fire. Then I took off one of my raw deer-skins, spread it out and sat down upon it, and there I sat all night, turning every now and then, as some side of me would get to freezing. I had nothing else to do but to watch the stars, whenever the snow ceased blowing on me from the mountains, except making the old pines and hemlocks smoke.

Dec. 7.—Just after daylight the wind began to blow. It knows exactly how to blow, and where to hit or cut deepest. But it was death or victory, and I was obliged to start anyhow. I gathered my chunk, looked at my fire awhile, and started. I used to hate to leave my fire in the morning, not knowing where the next fire was to be. After traveling about three hundred yards, I came upon a little hollow, where I could see mule sign. (They had been out to our wagons). I could see where they had sunk to their bellies, and as they raised their knees, had pushed up the big pieces of crusted snow on end. But I was glad to see any sign of the road for I never knew whether I was in it or out of it. Andrews had given me all directions he could about the road, but he could not find the way in himself, much less tell me. I had not got fifteen steps across the hollow, when I came to a big hemlock, which was lying in the edge of a thicket of mountain cottonwood and hemlock. I found I was freezing to death, and had to stop. I tumbled old brindle (his gun) to the ground, and tried to drop my chunk, but could not do so for some time my fingers were so froze. I got it down at last, and tried to straighten out my fingers by rubbing them up and down my legs, but I could not do it and had to pick up chunks between my two fists, and pack them to my fire alongside of the hemlock. There like to have been no calling of the dogs that time. I laid there till I got thawed out a little, and then moved further down among the hemlock, where I made me a real comfortable place to stay in all day. I had not been there long before I shot a white wolf, intending to eat him, but he went tumbling over and over till he got out of the way. I did not care much about it, though, for I was not hungry at all. I had other things to think of than getting hungry. It clouded up toward morning, and just after the sun rose it began to snow.

Dec. 8.—I was right glad to see it turn warm enough for snow to fall; so I shouldered old brindle, gathered a chunk and started. In traveling about eight miles I came to the edge of what Andrews had described to me as the Black Lake. It is a hollow prairie where water is sometimes. I do not know how far it is across it, for I took no notice of the distance. When I got into it I never expected to see any other place. It heads all cold places I ever saw, at any rate; and I think it is about six miles across it. Just as I entered it, I found I was freezing, and stopped in a cliff of rocks, and made a little fire of choke-cherry bushes. I could have put the whole of it in my hat. I pulled off my moccasins, and began to thaw them; but before they were half thawed, my feet began to swell and I was obliged to put on my hard moccasins again. I stayed here about an hour, and then I took a few sprigs of choke cherries and lighted them. It was snowing violently. I had got so as not to care much about life now, and I did not take any particular pains to keep my sprigs alive as I walked, and had they gone out, I never should have struck fire again. I had not gone more than half a mile, when I reached a clump of eight or ten pine trees, and determined on stopping here. I gathered a few pieces of pine, and blowed up my sprigs, now almost extinguished. After setting my pieces of wood afire, I had ten minds not to put anything to it, where I had one to do so. All that I could see about me was two big logs on the side of the little rise, and I concluded to give them a try. I carried my fire to the side of the lower one, and then turned in to rolling the upper one down along side of it. I made half a dozen trials, and then gave it up. I did not believe then that half a dozen oxen could have stirred it. I went and laid my gun on a high stump, so that Andrews and Chambers might see it, and sat down by the fire again. I would have died then willingly. After a while, I thought that I would take another try, and went to the log again. I gave one lift, but it was in vain. Rage and despair urged me on again, and I lifted with a strength which seems astonishing to me now, and I felt it move. I tried again, and out it came; and as I raised this last time, I saw the fire flash out of my eyes, and felt the joints of my back snap together. I rolled it down along side of the other, and they made a most glorious fire, which was burning when Chambers and Andrews came by the next day. Here I lay, that is to say, sat upon a deerskin about as big as the brim of a hat, all night. It cleared off in the night, but did not grow so much colder as I expected.

Dec. 9.—This morning I took my chunk of fire, and put out again. I had not taken my moccasins off here, for fear of never getting them on again; and in half an hour they were froze stiff again. I thought, just after starting, that I never would get across the Black Lake, and turned back and went half a mile, intending to lay at my fire until Chambers and Andrews came up; for there was no kind of track in the lake, and I did not know whether I was going right or wrong. I again summoned up resolution, turned my face to Taos again, and by good luck kept the right course. I made three fires this day before I stopped at night, and after all came nigh giving up the ghost several times. I wished heartily to die, but hated to kill myself and so kept moving. When I got into the narrow canon beyond the Black

Lake, I saw a mule track or two again, and again thought I might get some place. After leaving the canon I encamped on the head of a spring not many miles this side of the last mountain, and was more comfortable here than anywhere in the mountains. There was an old pine fallen, and I stripped some big pieces of the bark off, put one under me, one edgeways at my back, and one at my head, as well as one at my feet, and lay down. This was luxury. Still I felt no hunger, and still I kept my moccasins on.

Dec. 11.—This morning I gathered me a chunk and started, concluding this would be the last day I could hold out. I soon reached the foot of the mountain, and in the way, and during the ascent, I sat down several times, never intending to rise again. It seems a pretty bold thing to say, and hard to believe, but so it is. The thoughts of turning coward would raise me again, and I kept on until I reached the top of the mountain. You know what a dark, black-looking place it is on the other side, away down, down in the depths of the valley. When I looked off from the summit of the mountain, and saw it, the thought flashed into my mind that this must be the Black Lake. No man in the world can .express the feelings which came over me then. I still kept moving down the mountain, and when about halfway down, I threw away my chunk of fire, and gave myself up to die; still, however, resolving to move as long as I had life. I had sat by my fire and wept at night, and had prayers in my heart, though I did not utter them; but I shed not a tear now. I kept on through the valley, and towards noon reached the canon, which I knew to be twelve miles from the still house. I knew where I was now, and found mule tracks here. Now I determined to go in or die; and in fact, as I had thrown away my fire, I had no other chance, for I could not have made fire. I could not use my hands a bit. I had gone but a little way in the canon, when I found a beaten track, and soon got to the places where wood had been cut. My feet were now all cut to pieces by my hard moccasins, and I could hear the blood splash in them as I walked, as though they were full of water, while the snow would gather in the heels of them until the hinder part of my foot would be four inches sometimes from the moccasin. After a while, I saw a cow; it was the pleasantest sight I ever saw in my life, and just as I had concluded not to walk more than half an hour longer, and as I went staggering along, so sleepy that I could hardly move, I heard a chicken crow. How it waked me up! and I soon after came in sight of the old mud still house. I went round to the lower end of it, and two or three dogs came out and began upon me. In a minute, I could see two men looking through the hole in the door. I could have shot both their eyes out with one bullet. "Hallo!" said I; and they pushed the door partly open and stood looking at me. They took me, as they said afterwards, to be a Cumanche, who had come in ahead of a party, to take the still house—and no wonder, for the pine smoke had made me as black as you please, and my hair was perfect jet. Long was the best soldier, and he stepped out and walked round me, keeping a good distance though, and with his eye fixed upon the door. The dogs were still baying me; and I, at length enraged, spoke in good plain English: "Call off your dogs, or I will put a bullet through one of them/' Hearing me speak, they soon drove away their dogs and told me to come in. I did so, sat down by the fire, and after thawing out my hands, began ripping open my moccasins with my knife. In the meantime Conn and Long, who are both the best fellows in the world, began to recover the power of speech. They stood and looked at me awhile, and then Conn inquired: "Where, in the name of heaven are you from?"
"From the United States."
"What company did you come with?"
"I came with a company of my own, of two men."
"Where are they?"
"Behind in the mountains."
"Are these all the clothes you have got?"
"Yes, they are so."
"What! and you have no blankets?"
"No, not one."
"Have you eaten anything today?"
"No, not for five days."
"What! are you not hungry?"
"No."

They drew me about half a pint of whiskey, which I barely tasted, and Conn brought me a bit of meat, about as big as my two fingers, and a like bit of bread. In vain I told them I would not thank them for that little and begged for more. When it touched my stomach, my hunger became ravenous, but finding I could not get more, I submitted, and turned in to ripping my moccasins again. In ten minutes after the moccasins were off, my feet were swelled as big as four feet ought to be. I could have cried with the pain, and while I sat bearing it as well as I could, an old Spaniard came in—old Senor San Juan. The old fellow started back when he saw me, lifted up his hands with a stare of terror and surprise on his dried-up face, and uttered the ejaculation, Adios! In two minutes, he had half a bushel of onions in the ashes and as soon as they were roasted, he swathed my feet up with a parcel of them. I could not have lifted one of my feet with both hands. They were bigger than a bull's head. The old man stayed with me all night, changing the onions for fresh ones at intervals, and I have no doubt that it was old Mr. St. John who saved my feet for me. During the night Conn gave me a little bit of meat and bread at intervals, and in the morning he was about serving me the same way; but I uptripped him this time, and declared my resolution of eating breakfast with him and Long. I ate all I could get, though it was not half enough, and during the day I ate about fifteen times. I thought while I was there that I never would get out of the sound of a chicken's voice again. This day I sent word to Kincaid and old Chambers that Andrews was in the mountains, and they informed his father-in-law, who immediately went out for him, and found him and Chambers at the forks of the canon. They were both better dressed than I and had thin moccasins; in consequence they froze their feet but very little. In fact, Andrews said that "he believed he could have come in better as I." And sure enough, the rascal had only been possuming the whole time, and was better able to travel than I was, but wanted me to break the way and pack his gun.

Lewis lay at the still house six weeks before he was able to go to San Fernandez, a distance of three miles. While there, he was visited frequently by the Indians of the Pueblo of Taos, and presented by them with cakes and dried fruit, etc. They wished to convey him to their village, but he could not go. At length, at the expiration of six weeks, he was lifted on a horse and taken to the Rio Hondo, as it is called, a little settlement four or five miles from San Fernandez, in the same valley of Taos. In the meantime, the skin had peeled off from the whole of his body, and the flesh had come from parts of his feet, so that the bones and sinews were bare. He was soon after attacked with the pleurisy; and, to use his own expression, the thing was near dead out with him. He recovered, however, although it was not until April that he became perfectly well. After that he was the terror of the Spaniards, for he could have demolished them rapidly with his powerful arm, had they ever given him cause. He is not quarrelsome, however, even when he gets caught in what they call in the west, "a spree."

In the month of May, Lewis joined himself to a party of five men, including himself, headed by Tom Smith, the "Bald Hornet," for the purpose of trapping in the mountains, between the forks of Grand river, that is the Colorado of California, and there commenced trapping. The first night that Lewis set his traps, he had entered a little narrow canon, which had never been trapped, because a man could not ride up it. He took.it on foot, with his six traps on his back, obtained a seat for all of them, and went back to camp, about fifteen miles. He there borrowed all the spare traps, returned the next morning, and, finding four beaver in his traps, set out ten which he had brought, and went back to camp again with four beaver. On returning again the next morning with a companion, he found eight more beaver in his traps, and was sure of making, as he says, an independent fortune. The whole party of five then moved there, and trapped the creek. I am almost afraid to describe the manner of catching this animal, but it may be new to some of my readers You find the place where the animal comes out of the water—that is, if you can—and set your trap in his path, about four inches under the water, fastening your chain to a stake, which you put as far out in the water as its length will allow; sometimes you cover it with moss or something else. This depends on the nature of the settlement of the beaver, whether it has been often trapped or not. You then dip a little twig in your bait, (that is, in dissolved castor), and stick this twig sometimes just outside of them. The beaver goes to the smell of the castor and is generally caught by the fore feet, and flouncing over, is drowned in the water. If the place has been long trapped, they are too old to be caught by bait. Lewis once set his traps five nights for an old beaver, and for four nights the old fellow took away his bait-stick without springing the trap. On the fifth night Lewis placed his trap still deeper under the water and covered it with moss, placing no bait-stick.
He then washed away all trace of himself, and in the morning he had the beaver. He was an immense old fellow, and had got out on the bank, where he lay puffing and shaking the water. Lewis laid down his gun and pistols and then creeping up to him caught him by the hind leg. The beaver tried to bite him, but was unable to do it, until Lewis, putting his knee on the trap, loosened his paw from it, and dashed his brains out with it.

It is no uncommon thing to see trees, three and four feet in diameter, cut down by these animals, cut up into lengths of about eight feet, and taken lengthwise to their dam.

They had only caught about forty beavers in this mountain, when the Eutaws came upon them, in number about three hundred, and wished to rob them. They are in the habit of doing so to the Mexicans; but they, to use another western phrase, "barked up the wrong tree" when they got hold of Tom Smith. The Bald Hornet is not easily frightened, if he has a wooden leg. The old chief sat down in their camp, and after various threats, shot his gun at the ground as a sign that they would kill all the party immediately. Tom was undaunted; he told the chief that he might kill them, but could not rob them; that his heart was big as the sky, and defied the old chief to attack them. All this time he was keeping Lewis off who had drawn his pistol when the chief shot his gun into the ground, and would have killed him, had not Tom interfered. The consequence of their boldness was that the Eutaws went off without molesting or robbing them. They then immediately moved camp.

While upon the Elk Mountain, they killed several mountain sheep and white bear. The former animal is larger than a deer and is like a common sheep in appearance—of a dirty light color—and a great lover of rocks and precipices, in which, as well as in its speed and faculty of smell, it equals the chamois. Their horns are like those of the domestic sheep, but much larger and stronger. They will often fall thirty or forty feet, strike upon their horns, and rise and go off as if nothing had happened to them. You may see them standing with all their feet together, and that in a place where they scarcely have foothold. Lewis was out, after leaving the Elk Mountain, in company with Alexander, one of his companions, and an excellent hunter. They came upon a flock of perhaps sixty or seventy of these sheep. Lewis shot, struck one, and he fell. Alexander likewise fired, but missed entirely. They then ran about thirty yards farther and stopped again. Being now about one hundred and fifty yards from them, Alexander was for creeping nearer, but Lewis determined to shoot from the place in which they were. "Shoot then," said Alexander. "I cannot hit one at this distance." "Do you see that bunch of heads
together?" said Lewis, "I will shoot at the upper head." He did so, and the sheep fell and lay kicking. Alexander ran and cut his throat, and then went to the first one which Lewis had shot and was busy doing the same office for him, when the former rose and made off over the rocks. Alexander rose also, and was hardly off the sheep, when it likewise rose and followed its companion, and they lost both. The party laughed heartily at Alexander, for acting the doctor and bleeding mountain sheep. The meat of these animals is excellent, and their skins are thin, when dressed, and soft as velvet.

From the Elk mountain they crossed to the main branch of Grand river and came within a few days' journey
of the heads of the Columbia. They then left this branch, after trapping a time upon it, and crossed to the head of Smith's fork of the same river, and thence to the heads of the. Arkansas, where they trapped again, and then crossed to the heads of the Del Norte, and came in to Santa Fe. The last forty days they had only one bag of dried meat to live on, and it was during this time that they shot and lost the two sheep. They killed nothing at all in that time. They bought a dog or two in the time from the Eutaws, and ate them. Grand river, on which they mostly trapped, has been, and still is, excellent hunting ground. It has been supposed that there is much beaver below the place where Lewis trapped, and in a canon through which the river runs for a distance of two or three hundred miles. I think that the trappers compute the length of the canon at three hundred. The river where it emerges is half a mile wide, and yet you may stand on the edge of the fissure in the solid rock which forms the canon, and the river a hundred feet below, looks like a thread. It is a terrible place, and once in it, there is no egress except at the lower end of it. Some Spaniards unwittingly entered it once in a canoe, and were carried violently down it about forty miles. There they fortunately reached an eddy, produced by a bend in the sides of the canon, stopped the canoe, and climbed up the sides of the canon, which were there less precipitous than usual, leaving canoe, beaver, guns, etc., all in the canon to find a way through it.

It was on the heads of the Del Norte that General Pike, then a lieutenant, was taken by the Mexicans. Has it ever been satisfactorily known why he was there? I think not. He could have been mistaken in the river. He knew it not to be the Arkansas, and he knew himself to be in the Mexican territory. Was he not seeking a place for the army of Aaron Burr to enter and subdue Mexico ? He was no traitor, I know; and neither, in my opinion, was Aaron Burr. Neither ever aimed to raise a hand against our own country. I find some proof of Pike's intentions in his book.

After Lewis had returned to Taos from his trapping expedition in the mountains, I first became acquainted with
him. In the month of August I heard that Mr. John Harris of Missouri was collecting a party for the purpose of entering and trapping the Cumanche country, upon the heads of Red river and Fausse Washita, and I was induced by the prospect of gain, and by other motives, to go up from Santa Fe to Taos and join him. After my arrival, however, I thought it best to buy an outfit of Mr. Campbell, who was going into the same country, and to join him, and did so. The only Americans in our party were Mr. Campbell, a young man who came with me from Santa Fe, and myself. There was likewise a Frenchman. I bought my outfit—one horse, one mule, six traps and plenty of powder, lead and tobacco—and went out to the valley of the Picuris, a distance of about thirty miles over the hills and among the pine woods. Here and there was a little glade, among the hills, grassy and green; but generally it was all a bleak and unproductive country. The pine trees were stripped of bark to the height of six or eight feet by the Apaches, who prepare the inner coat of the bark in some manner, and eat it; and I observed that it was only one particular kind of pine which they used, viz., the rough yellow pine. My friend and myself were alone, and in consequence we soon lost our way; we traveled until nearly night, and then retraced our steps for about four miles, to a place where we had seen remains of an Indian fire. Here we kindled a large fire, tied our horses, and lay down with our guns by our sides. We were awakened early in the morning by the howling of wolves close to us, which, however, was of short duration. We then mounted and proceeded again towards Taos, but meeting a Mexican, who was going to our camp to recover a horse, which he said he had lost, we turned back again, and about noon arrived at camp, where we stayed four or five days, lounging about and quarreling with the New Mexicans, for whom we had killed several oxen and who disliked the idea of going to San Fernandez to receive their pay. On the fourth of September those of our p
arty and Harris' for whom we had been waiting came out from Taos. Both parties joined, made up between seventy and eighty men, of whom about thirty were Americans. One was a Eutaw, one an Apache, and the others were Mexicans. Among the men who came out on the fourth was Lewis, who belonged to the party of Harris.

The readers need not expect much delineation of characters. Trappers are like sailors—when you describe one the portrait answers for the whole genus. As a specimen of the genuine trapper, Bill Williams certainly stands foremost. He is a man about six feet one inch in height, gaunt and red-headed, with a hard, weather-beaten face, marked deeply with the smallpox. He is all muscle and sinew, and the most indefatigable hunter and trapper in the world. He has no glory except in the woods, and his ambition is to kill more deer and catch more beaver than any other man about him. Nothing tires him, not even running all day with six traps on his back. His horse fell once, as he was galloping along the edge of a steep hill, and rolled down the hill, while his feet were entangled in the stirrups, and his traps dashing against him at every turn. He was picked up half dead, by his companion, and set upon his horse, and after all he outwitted him, and obtained the best set for his traps. Neither is he a fool. He is a shrewd, acute, original man, and far from illiterate. He was once a preacher, and afterwards an interpreter in the Osage nation.

There was Tom Banks, the Virginian, with his Irish tongue, and his long stories about Saltee, as he called Saltillo, and the three tribes of Indians, the Teuacanas, Wequas and Toyahs, whose names were never out of his boasting mouth. He claimed to have been prisoner among the Cumanches three months but he lied, for he could not utter a word of their language.
There were various others, better at boasting than at fighting, and a few upon whom a man might depend in an emergency.

We left the valley of the Picuris on the sixth day of September, taking the pass which, following the river up, led out to the large valley of the Demora, at which we arrived on the same day, and encamped near the Old Village— in it, in fact. These New Mexicans, with a pertinacity worthy of the Yankee nation, have pushed out into every little valley which would raise half a bushel of red pepper— some of them like this on the eastern side of the mountains— thus exposing themselves to the Pawnees and Cumanches, who, of course, use them roughly. The former tribe broke up the settlement in this valley about fifteen years ago, and the experiment has never been repeated, though this valley, and that of the Gallinas, are great temptations to the Spaniards. The sole inhabitants of the Old Village now are rattlesnakes, of which we killed some two or three dozen about the old mud houses. The third day brought us by a roundabout course, to the junction of the creeks Demora and Sepellote, about fifty miles from San Miguel, and on the Missouri wagon road. Buffalo are frequently found in the winter not far from here, namely, at the springs called "Los Ojos de Santa Clara," "The Eyes of Saint Clara," distant a day's journey beyond. While at the Old Village the night before a consultation had been held to determine what course we should pursue. Lewis advised to cross to the main fork of the Canadian branch of the Arkansas, or, as it is commonly called, Little Red river, and then following his trail, to go on to the Washita, trap it, and then to the heads of Red river. But, acting under a wrong impression and a radical mistake, this advice was rejected. It was supposed by all of us that Red river and all its main branches headed into the mountains, and that it was only necessary to keep under the mountains, and we should necessarily find beaver. It was determined, then, to obtain an old Cumanche, who had been converted, and was married in San Miguel, as our guide, and to go directly to the rivers which we supposed lay not far to the southwest of us, and contained beaver. Accordingly, on arriving the next day at the wagon road, it was agreed that the party should go down the Gallinas a day or two, and cross over to the Pecos, where I was to find them. For at the time we supposed that the Gallinas creek ran into Red river, while, on the contrary, it runs into the Pecos. While they, therefore, followed the course of the Gallinas, I, in company with three of our Mexicans, went into San Miguel to bring out the Cumanche.

The country is rolling prairie for a part of the way between the Demora and San Miguel. About noon we reached the Gallinas, where we rested and fed our mules. We then struck into the hills, crossed the little creek called the Tecolote (Owl) and slept at night at the Ojo de Bernal, within seven miles of San Miguel, where we arrived the next morning. That day and the next we spent there, waiting the return of a messenger from Taos, and purchasing a horse; and on the third day, late in the morning; we left again the village of Saint Michael. Various prophecies were uttered, all boding ill to us. The Cumanches were described as biablos and infidels, and the women in particular seemed to take a great interest in our well-being. In fact, while we were at the old village of the Demora there came in some dozen Mexicans, who had gone from Taos to Red river, having hard bread and other "notions" to trade with the Cumanches. The Indians wisely concluded that it was better to get it all for nothing than to give in return their buffalo robes and horses, and they accordingly took violent possession of the mules and horses of the luckless peddlers, drove them off, and kept their hard bread in spite of their bows and arrows. Besides this, a new story had come in that a man had been shot by the Ciawas, about four days' journey out of San Miguel, and found by some of the Pueblos. Accompanied by many good wishes, prayers and benedictions, however, we left the village on the 12th, and reached that night a little village below, on the Pecos (whose course we followed), where we slept. The next morning we bought a sheep, and started again. At noon we heard that our party was about fifteen miles distant down the river. We were then at the last settlement, about forty miles from San Miguel. Beyond there are some deserted ranchos, as they are called—that is, sheep pens and shepherd huts. At night we reached the party, and right glad I was to be delivered from the peril of riding about in a dangerous country, accompanied only by four Mexicans (for an old man who had been sent from Taos to bear a letter to the Cumanche went out with us) and an old faithless Indian, of a tribe to which a white man is like a smoke in the nostrils. A lone American has no mercy from them, and little aid from the Mexicans who may chance to be with him. Not long ago one Frenchman went out from Taos, in company with a hundred and fifty Mexicans, and was by them given up to half their number of Cumanches to be murdered. It was even said that the Spaniards danced round his scalp in company with the Indians. One of these fellows was with me, and another one was with the party. I knew it not at the time, or the Senor Manuel Leal should not have accompanied me. The Cumanches have killed several of our countrymen when alone. Mr. Smith was out hunting antelope, when a body of them came upon him; he killed one woman and two men before they dispatched him. They have his scalp now, and sold his saddle, gun, pistols, etc., to the Spaniards. They killed another man the year before in the same way—blowing off his head with a f usse. This winter, two hundred and fifty of them attacked a party of twelve men on the Canadian, killed two and wounded several of them. Nor, though at peace with the Spaniards, do they serve them any better. On the fifth of July last (1832) they killed the nephew of the Commandant Viscara, while out alone and unarmed, with the oxen of his uncle, about three miles from Little Red river, and with thirty or forty troops in sight. They gave him thirteen wounds, took off all his hair except the foretop, and still left him alive.

When Mr. Flint, in his Francis Berrian, described these Indians as noble, brave and generous, he was immensely out in the matter. They are mean, cowardly and treacherous. Neither (since I am correcting a gentleman for whom I have a great regard) is there any village of the Cumanches on the heads of the Arkansas. Neither is the Governor's palace in Santa Fe anything more than a mud building, fifteen feet high with a mud covered portico, supported by rough pine pillars. The gardens and fountains and grand staircases, etc., are, of course, wanting. The Governor may raise some red pepper in his garden, but he gets his water from the public spring. But to return.

The next day, after my arrival, we kept on down the Pecos, agreeably to the direction of our guide, intending to
follow the river as far as Bosque Redondo, or Round Grove. This river Pecos, which derives its name from the Pecos tribe of Indians, rises in the same lake with the river of Santa Fe, and, passing by San Miguel, keeps a southeasterly course. At a distance of about 120 miles from San Miguel, it being there a deep stream about thirty yards wide, it bends to the south, and runs into a deep, narrow and rocky canon, in which it can not be followed. I know not how far it goes in this canon, but, emerging from it below, it keeps on its course southwardly and runs into the Del Norte near San Antonio. It is a long but narrow river, and, however important it may be to the people of San Miguel, it is of no great consequence in any other way.

On the 15th we started, all together, down the Pecos, but early in the morning a dispute arose between Harris and Campbell, which ended in a separation. Harris was now for going on to Little Red river through a dry prairie. We were for following our guide and the Pecos. We turned down to the river and Harris kept on ahead, but soon followed our example by turning to the river. Campbell and myself were delayed, recovering a mule which had joined to those of Harris, and in the meantime our party had encamped on the river. Harris went into the canon of the river and followed it down, and the next morning we turned to the hills above the canon and came upon the river below, leaving him struggling in it among the rocks. He was obliged at last, finding egress below impossible, to ascend the precipitous sides of the canon and come out upon the hills. After this, we never encamped together till we reached the Bosque Redondo, the point where we were to leave the river and strike into the prairie. We were six days in reaching the Bosque, including the 15th, and during the time we traveled in a southeast direction. The country along the river was hilly, red, and barren, devoid of timber, except on the river. At the Bosque we encamped near some lodges of poles, the remains of an old Cumanche camp, and Harris encamped half a mile or more above us.

The Spaniards who composed our party were now getting frightened. We had already had two alarms of Indians, which, although unfounded, still tended to discourage the cowardly pelayos; and, added to this, the name of the Llano Estacado, on whose borders we then were encamped, and which lay before us like a boundless ocean, was mentioned with a sort of terror, which showed that it was by them regarded as a place from which we could not escape alive. This Stake Prairie is to the Cumanche what the desert of Sahara is to the Bedouin. Extending from the Bosque Redondo on the west, some twenty days' journey on the east, northward to an unknown distance, and southward to the mountains on the Rio del Norte, with no game and here and there a solitary antelope, with no water except in here and there a hole, and with its whole surface hard, barren and dry, and with the appearance always of having been scorched by fire—the Cumanche alone can live in it. Some three or four human sculls greeted us in our passage through it, and it is said that every year some luckless Spaniard leaves one of these mementos lying in the desert. It is a place in which none can pursue. The Cumanches, mounted on the best steeds which the immense herds of the prairie can supply, and knowing the solitary holes of water, can easily elude pursuit.

Just before encamping at the Bosque Redondo, some of our Spaniards were met by a party of their countrymen, who had just returned from the Canon del Resgate, in the Stake Prairie. They had been there to trade hard bread, blankets, punche, beads, etc., for buffalo robes, bear skins and horses, and were returning with the avails of their traffic.

After night, Campbell and myself were called upon to attend a council of the Spaniards of our party. We accordingly went and found Manuel, the Cumanche, acting as chief counselor in the matter, and Manuel Leal and another of the fraternity officiating as spokesman. They informed us that the traders had brought bad reports from the Cumanches; that they and the hostile Caiawas were gathered in great strength in the Canon del Resgate; that they had defeated the American wagons, taking fifteen hundred mules and one scalp, and lost several men in the contest; that they were much excited against the Americans, and had determined that none of us should trap in their country, and that they had sent word to Manuel, the Cumanche, that if he entered their country guiding us they would sacrifice both us and him. They likewise told us that there were no buffalo in the prairie; and, though all the rest was a lie, this was indeed the truth. Manuel, the Cumanche, then declared that he would not enter the Stake Prairie, if one American remained in the company; and all the Spaniards seconded him. Finding thus that they would leave us to the mercy of the Cumanches, or perhaps give us into their hands, it was determined to leave them on the next morning; and thus went my last good opinion of New Mexican character. I had tried these men for the last; had put confidence in them, and knew that if they were not worthy of it there were none in the country that were; and I found this last, best specimen of character as treacherous, as cowardly, as any other portion of the province. A man does not like to be made a fool of, and I felt ashamed of myself for ever thinking again (after repeated proofs to the contrary) that any New Mexican could be a man. I think I never felt so badly as I did the next morning when I stood a four hours' guard in company with four Mexicans, and in a camp of them where I knew that not one would fight for me.

The next morning I went to the camp of Harris, and joined his party. R------and Pierre accompanied me, and
Campbell returned to Taos. That day we lay by, and the next we entered the Stake Prairie. I think it was the 21st of September that we left the Pecos, leaving the party of Campbell waiting for oxen on which to subsist. The Bosque Redondo is about 120 miles from San Miguel, or perhaps it may be nearer 150. As I kept no journal, and am writing merely from memory, I can not certainly say; but I am not far from the true distance.

We entered the Llano Estacado by the road of the Cumanches, and the Cumanche traders. We had been given to understand that in the course of fourteen days we should arrive at a descent, or falling off of the prairie to the east, and that there (rising out of this ceja, or eyebrow, as they call it), we should find the rivers Azul, which we took to be Red river, San Saba, Javalines, Las Cruces, and one other, whose name I have forgotten. We had with us one man who had trapped on some of these rivers, and who said that there was beaver on them. We never were on the Rio Azul, to my knowledge, but I am inclined to think that it is the main branch of the Colorado; the San Saba is a southern branch of it, the Mochico is another, north of the San Saba, and Javalines and Las Cruces are branches of the San Saba. They all head near the same degree of longitude.

September 21. We left the Pecos, taking a course to the northward, in search of the road which was to lead us to the Canon del Resgate. Our route lay, for about ten miles, across an uneven, dry, barren plain towards the edge of the Stake Prairie, which seemed like a low ridge before us. Reaching this about noon, we discovered that two of our Mexicans were missing, intending, as we supposed, to join the party of Campbell, through fear of entering the desert. Two or three of the party. went back accordingly, and brought them up: We then proceeded three or four miles, passing, on our way, a good sweet spring of water, where we first came into the road; and following the branch which ran down by this spring, we encamped in a grassy meadow to the east of the stream. This day Bill Williams killed an antelope, which was divided among the whole party of forty-five men. Here we saw plenty of sign of wild horses.

Sept. 22. Left camp early, and followed the road, which now took a southeasterly direction. The day was exceedingly hot, and we were frequently tantalized by seeing at a distance ponds which appeared to be full of clear, rippling water. The deception would continue until we were within a dozen rods of the place, and it would then be found to consist of merely a hollow, encrusted over with salt. About noon, thirst becoming excessive, two or three of us rode ahead. The prairie was still uneven and rugged. We passed through a body of sandhills, and then, descending from them, came upon a hollow where the earth appeared damp, and there were two or three old holes which had been dug either by the traders or by the Cumanches. We here stopped and dug for water, obtaining enough to satiate our thirst. It was warm, but fresh. The eagerness with which our men drank, as they came up one by one, and threw themselves upon the ground, was amusing. Some of the party were for encamping here, but we overruled them, and went on. After traveling four or five miles, we came upon a large lake, and, turning to the right of it, we found a spring by which we encamped. No antelope was killed today. Some of the party tried to kill cranes, and Bill Williams succeeded towards night in bringing one to camp. This day we saw two skulls bleaching in the sun. Traveled this day about eighteen miles.

Sept. 23. Started early again, and hunted the road an hour or two; in the meantime crossed a piece of marshy ground. Some of us here went ahead to hunt; killed nothing. Towards night we thought we saw buffalo at a distance upon a ridge; we went to it accordingly, but found it to be only weeds looming up in the distance; turned down to a piece of low ground, where there was water in holes, and encamped; found here the remains of a defeated party of Spaniards—old blankets, saddles, etc. Here, finding ourselves in danger of starving, Harris killed an old mare, of which our mess refused to be partakers. We had determined to starve two days longer before eating any of it. This day we traveled on the road about twelve miles. This road was now broad and plain, consisting of fourteen or fifteen horse trails side by side; its course still southeast.

Sept. 24. Early this morning Bill Williams killed an antelope, which was divided among the whole party. After eating, we started again, still keeping the road, still very hot, and no water on the road. Stopped at noon on a hill, and lay in the sun; saw horse tracks here. About the middle of the afternoon we reached a low place fed by a spring which came out under limestone rocks; this was very good water. Here were plenty of Cumanche lodge poles, sites of lodges, half burnt sticks, etc., and piles of buffalo bones. Wherever the Cumanches kill buffalo they make piles of the bones, for the purpose of appeasing the offended animals, and have ceremonies performed over them by their medicine men; and no matter how poor a fire they have, or how wet and cold it may be, they will not burn a bone, alleging that it would make them unlucky in hunting. A son of Harris killed an antelope here, and our mess still ate no horse meat. We traveled this day about twelve miles, and still toward the southeast, following the road.

Sept. 25. Six of us this morning kept to the right of the party for the purpose of hunting. About noon we reached a hole of water, at which we found the track of a buffalo bull. We separated accordingly, three to the sandhills on the left and the others of us to those which lay to the right, along on the edge of a large dry salt lake. The idea of getting buffalo inspired us, 'and we pushed on cheerily with our jaded animals, now weary with running antelope. After traveling among the hills to the distance of a mile and a half from the place where we separated, we saw five bulls below us in a wide hollow, lying down. One of us went back then to the party, to bring more men and better horses, with which to run the buffalo, and in the meantime my companion and myself dismounted and lay awaiting his return. In the course of an hour we were joined by some thirteen, including the three from whom we had separated. We approached warily to within a hundred yards of the animals, and then rushed upon them; and had I been mounted on anything but a slow mule, the chase would have been more exciting. As it was, I was soon distanced, for though a buffalo appears, both standing and running, to be the most unwieldly thing in the world, I can assure my readers that they get along with no inconsiderable degree of velocity; and, strange as it may seem, no matter how old and lean a buffalo may be, no matter if he can not run ten steps after he is up, still you can never see more than one motion when he rises; he is up and running in an instant. Shot after shot and shout after shout told the zeal of the hunters, and in a short time one buffalo fell about three, miles from me. Thither I went, and while the hunters were busy cutting up the animal, Lewis and myself went in pursuit of another, which was wounded. Our expedition was unsuccessful; we accordingly followed the party, now in motion, and after traveling about eight miles through a dry plain, covered with scrub oak bushes, very small, we encamped at a spring near the road, and in the course of two hours the other hunters came in, having killed two more buffalo. Here was nothing to burn, not even the ordure of horses, which had hitherto never failed us; we could only make a blaze of tall weeds, and throw in our meat. I can conceive of nothing so disgusting. Lean, tough and dry, blackened with the brief blaze, impregnated with the strong, filthy smoke of the weeds—and only half cooked—it required the utmost influence of that stern dictator, hunger, to induce us to eat it. The reader is not to imagine that the meat of the buffalo is all good. Oh, no! The meat of the cow is, of a certainty, superior to any meat on earth; but even horse meat is better than the flesh of a lean old bull. To add to our comforts, the ground here was covered with sandburs, which easily pierced through our thin moccasins, and kept us continually employed in picking them out of our feet. Traveled today about eighteen miles.

Sept. 26. This day I mounted my horse, determining not to be left behind again in a chase. Very windy. I have forgotten this day's journey entirely. We traveled, however, nearly all day, and must have made fifteen miles in a southeast direction.

Sept. 27. This day the road turned first north and then nearly northwest, leading through a deep, soft sand. About the middle of the afternoon we came in sight of trees. These were the first we had seen since leaving the Pecos, and they were merrily hailed by all the party, as though they had been old friends. There is nothing adds so much to the loneliness of the prairie as the want of timber. Bill Williams, a Frenchman by the name of Gerand, and myself, were now ahead, pushing on to reach water and timber, for we were both tired and hungry. It was likewise very cold and windy, and the sand was continually blowing in our eyes. We had entirely lost the road, and when we at length ascended the highest sandhill near us and saw an even plain extending in front of us, we found that we were not yet near the water. Antonio, our guide, indicated a place where he said he had once encamped, and where there was water, and while looking towards it, we saw buffalo in the distance. We accordingly pushed on, leaving Antonio to wait for the pack mules, hoping ourselves to kill a cow before night. Arriving within half a mile of them, we found that they were horses, and at the same time that we were close upon a camp of the Cumanches, around which horses were feeding. We stood looking at the lodges until we were joined by half a dozen more of the party, who informed us that a young squaw was with the party. We all then returned to meet the pack mules and to take measures for any emergency. On arriving at the party, Bill Williams insisted on shooting the woman, who was riding towards the camp leading a horse packed with wood. Bill was actually senseless with fear, or he would not have done it. He drew his pistol, and was only deterred from shooting her by a threat of instant death if he did so. I do not think that we would have shot him for her, but he supposed we would do it, and it answered our purpose. The girl went on and we held a consultation on the course to be pursued. Bill declared that he would sooner sleep three nights without water than go to the village, and the silence of several others gave assent to what he said. But the rest of us overruled him, and we determined on proceeding and encamping at the water. Our Spaniards commenced firing off and reloading their guns; and in the meantime the Cumanches began to come out, mounted, towards us. Three of them, including an old chief, first met us. We directed our interpreter to ask them if they were friends. They answered that they were—that they had shaken hands with the Americans, and were friends. Bill was again protesting that he would kill the chief, but was again hindered by the same significant threat as before. As they now began to come in greater force from the village, we directed the chief to order them to keep to their distance, and we moved forward, agreeably to the request of the chief, who wished us to encamp near the
village. Notwithstanding our former order, the Indians pressed upon us, all armed with spears and bows; and, seeing that Antonio hesitated, through fear, to interpret for us, I directed the chief in Spanish (at which I was only linguist) to send back his men, or we would fire upon them. This threat produced the desired effect, and we were molested no more until we reached the place .for encamping, upon the edge of a marshy spot of ground, with here and there a hole of water. Just above us was the village, consisting of about twenty lodges, together with some additional minor edifices. A good Caiawa, or Cumanche lodge, is about fifteen feet high, made with six or eight poles, and in the form of a cone, covered with dressed buffalo hides, which, when new, are perfectly white, but grow brown and smoky with age. Inasmuch as these Cumanches are wandering Indians, and as it is seldom that they find themselves in a place where they can obtain lodge poles, they are obliged to carry them wherever they go. Thus you may know their trail by the marks which the poles make as they are dragged along, suspended on each side of their horses. They likewise carry an abundance of stakes for securing their horses.

The Cumanches are a nation entirely distinct from the Pawnees, with whom they are often confounded, because a part of the western desert is common ranging ground for both nations. Generally speaking, westwardly from the degree of longitude distant 400 miles from the border of Arkansas territory, and extending to the Rocky mountains, and bounded on the north by the upper branches of the Arkansas, and on the south by the Rio del Norte is the country of the Cumanches. Still, as I have mentioned before, the Pawnees do rob and murder along the mountains to a considerable distance south, and, as well as the Caiawas and Arapehoes, are to be found on the main Canadian and to the south of it.

The Cumanches are a part of the Snake or Shoshone nation, and speak nearly the same language. They have no settled place of abode, and no stationary villages. They follow the buffalo, and are most commonly to be found, in the winter, along the Pecos and Del Norte; and in the summer, on the Canadian and Semaron; but even to this there are exceptions. This last winter they were upon the Canadian, as they were likewise in July, 1832. In the winter of 1831-2, they were not on that river at all, but were gathered in numbers along the Del Norte below the pass. As to their number of warriors, I doubt if any one knows much about it. The country through which they range i£ so large, and they are so liable to be confounded with other tribes, that we are not likely to have any certain idea of their numbers. I have heard the whole nation estimated at 10,000 warriors, but I am mistaken if they have more than five thousand. As we knew that the part of the Cumanches living to the south along the Presidio del Norte, and bordering on the Indians of Texas, were, for all our purposes, entirely distinct from the northern Cumanches, we took great pains to find out to which our present acquaintances belonged. We knew that those in the south were more friendly to the Americans, and less treacherous than those in the north, who, although speaking a different language from the Caiawas, are still always allied with them, and are, like them, the deadly enemies of the Americans. They uniformly asserted that they were from the Del Norte, and were friendly. In corroboration of this, they had a few red and green American blankets, which we thought they must have obtained from San Antonio in Texas. They might, however, have obtained them of the Snakes, as they do their guns; while the Snakes are supplied by the trappers and traders. Seeing but few warriors about, we inquired where they all were? They answered, "To the north, hunting," and this induced us to believe only that they were with the Caiawas on the track of the returning wagons.

The old chief told us, too, that when he was in Santa Fe, just before, he went thither for the purpose of making peace with the Americans there as he had done in San Antonio.

If he was in Santa Fe he and his party were the Indians who killed the nephew of Viscara. On the whole, we concluded to believe them to be hostile and northern Cumanches, whom fear, and not their own good will, forced to keep peace with us. Soon after our arrival, the few young men who were in the village mounted and went off in different directions, as the chief said, for the purpose of hunting—but, as we believed, to give intelligence to the other villages and to the scattered warriors—and none were left in the village, except the old men, women and children. The people of this village appeared to be extremely poor. They had few blankets, no buffalo robes—no meat— and were dressed shabbily, and without any of that gaudiness which some Indians exhibit. A dirty and ragged dress of leather and part of a ragged blanket was the common apparel. They were, in fact, a very common looking Indian, much inferior in person to the Osages, the Shawnees, the Delawares, or any of the Mexican tribes, except the Apaches. I saw few of them possessing that acute and at the same time dignified look common to the aboriginal. They are of middle height, and, like all Indians, have good limbs, and long black hair, which they leave uncut. Some of them had their hair joined behind to buffalo or horse hair, and a rope of the latter depending from it, which nearly reached the ground. The old women, particularly, were hideously ugly. I imagine that there is no being on earth who would be as valuable to a painter desirous of sketching his satanic majesty as an old Cumanche woman. They reminded me strongly of Arab women, whom I have seen painted out in divers veritable books of travels. The same high cheek bones, long black hair, brown, smoked, parchment-like skin, bleared eyes and fiendish look, belong to the women of both nations.

While looking at them I could hardly help shuddering as the thought would strike me that possibly they might ere long have an opportunity of exercising the infernal ingenuity of their nature on me. Several of us went to their village, distant from us perhaps three hundred yards, and bought wood and a little dried buffalo meat of them, with tobacco and vermillion. The young man, in particular, who was the only intelligent looking Indian among them, took especial pains to obtain me some meat, and likewise offered me a good horse for red cloth enough to make him a pair of leggins. I had no such article, however. Horses are their only riches. There were about a thousand of them round this village and a few mules. I particularly observed one mule in the mark of Agustin Duran, custom house officer at Santa Fe. In the evening the same young fellow came down and invited Harris and his clerk, Bill Williams and myself to go up and eat with him. Taking our guns, we went accordingly. We found the old chief and his family outside of the lodge, seated round a fire, over which a small brass kettle was hanging. On our arrival we were motioned to our seats with true Indian gravity and something of respect. The contents of the brass kettle were then emptied into a wooden bowl, and placed before us. It was the boiled flesh of a fat buffalo cow, perfectly fresh, having been killed that day, and a most delicious meal it was to us. Kettle after kettle was filled and emptied between us and the family of the chief; for it takes but five minutes to boil this meat. A man never knows how much meat he can eat until he has tried the prairie, but I assure the reader that four pounds at a meal is no great allowance, especially to a hungry man. On ending the supper, we paid them with tobacco and a knife or two, and returned to our camp—not, however, without that indispensable ceremony, a general smoke, in which my pipe went out once or twice, round the whole party, women and all. The next morning the chief wished us to lay by a day or two, and hunt buffalo. He assured us that there was an abundance of buffalo cows on a lake about nine miles to the northeast, and that his young men should accompany our hunters there. We declined remaining, chiefly through apprehension of treachery. Finding that we would not remain, he promised us that at the next village his son and daughter-in-law should join us and conduct us to the beaver. He said that we should find beaver in nine days.

Sept. 28. Gathered up our horses and left the camp of the Cumanches, directing our course nearly due east, and following the trail by which the chief and his party had come a day or two before. Our route at first lay through sandhills, just before emerging from which we found two or three hackberry trees, and several of us delayed, picking the berries. From the sandhills we now came again upon the prairie, and found much difficulty in tracking the marks of the lodge poles along its hard surface—and in addition it began to rain. Just at night, followed the path into a break in the prairie which opened into a long hollow, in which we encamped by the side of a pond, which is the head of one of the chief branches of the Colorado or the Brazos de Dios river.

Lest I may be misunderstood, I will explain why I use both these names in speaking of this river. The reader, by consulting the map, will find two rivers running through Texas, of which the longer one is called (in most maps, if not in all) the Colorado. But I have been informed that not long since the names were changed, and that the long river is now called the Brazos. The reason given me for the change is this: Some years ago there was a drought in Texas; the short river (Brazos) became dry, and the only water came down in the long river (or the Colorado). The pious Spaniards accordingly changed names, and called the long river the Brazos de Dios (or the Arms of God), on account of the especial care which it took of them, and of the benefits which they received from it. We were now in the Canon del Resgate, and supposed ourselves to be on the heads of Red river, but we began to question the probability of finding the immense quantities of beaver which we had anticipated. Still, however, we had abundance of hope, though it was at times mingled with a little distrust. Our beef, too, was nearly gone, but Bill Williams, fortunately, killed an antelope, which was divided as usual. Ducks were abundant in this pond, and one or two were killed. Yesterday we traveled about twenty miles northeast and today twenty more, a little south of east, making in both days about forty miles.

Sept. 29. This day we followed the valley down for some distance. There was the bed of a stream, but water was not running. Here and there it stood in ponds and holes. The day was cold and windy, with a little rain. We then went out of the valley to the left, and traveled in the prairie, for the canon was merely a break in the plain of the width of two or three hundred yards, and as soon as you ascended the low sides of it you were again on the illimitable plain; and, like a well in the desert, the valley can not be seen until you are close upon it. About the middle of the afternoon we saw in the valley another encampment, and descended to it, for the purpose of procuring wood and water. On our approach, the women mounted their horses and took to the hills. A boy, whom they had taken prisoner from the Mexicans, came out and talked with us, and we sent him to assure the fugitives of our friendship. They soon returned, and as it was raining hard, we commenced trading for wood, and with difficulty bought enough to make fires. Bill Williams then went over and obtained part of a lodge cover, and two of the ugliest old women I ever saw brought the lodge poles and put it up for him. One of our party was lame with the rheumatism, and we managed to keep him out of the rain in the lodge. We bought some more dried meat, some dried grapes and acorns, paying tobacco, as usual. The rain poured upon us all night, and almost every gun in the camp was wet. We traveled this day about fifteen miles in a southeast direction.

Sept. 30. Left the valley and traveled in the prairie to the right of it. Late in the afternoon we turned down to timber, and found no water in the valley. Some of the party went to the distance of two miles above and below. Several of the party, among whom was myself, brought in terrapins hanging to their saddles. Our meat was gone, and these animals cost no ammunition. Some, likewise, had killed prairie dogs. The little plot of hackberry and bitter cottonwood, where we encamped, appeared to have been a great haunt of the buzzards and crows, and just after sunset the hawks began to gather in and we commenced shooting them, and thus, by means of hard labor, managed to satiate our hunger. Hawks and prairie dogs do very well, but there is too little meat upon a terrapin. Traveled eighteen miles today.

October 1. This day we again followed the road, which now kept down the valley, and after going about three miles we found rainwater standing in small holes. Soon after we came to a miry branch, and gave our animals drink. Early in the day Bill killed an antelope, and about noon, as we ascended a hill upon the edge of a valley (to the left of it) we saw two or three Indians on the other side of the prairie. Some of our party were behind. Bill gave the sign of Indians, by riding four or five times round in a circle of about ten feet in diameter, and when they rejoined us we all turned down to the valley again—still hunting terrapins—and at night we encamped on the creek at a large hole of water. Traveled this day about fifteen miles.

Oct. 2. About noon of today reached the site of an old encampment of the Indians; found some remnants of wood and a few acorns. We went, perhaps, a hundred yards beyond and encamped at a clear pond of water. Towards night a Cumanche came to us, armed with bow, arrows, spear and shield, the latter ornamented with feathers and red cloth. For his viaticum he bore the mane-piece of a horse. He remained with us all night, and informed us that there was beaver below on the river; he said the water would run soon. Another antelope was killed this day. Traveled this day about twelve miles.

Oct. 3. Traveled for a time in the valley, and were rejoiced at finding the water begin to run; it was a shallow, clear stream of sweet water, about twenty yards wide, and we began to have hopes of beaver. About noon we ascended the hills to the right (following the road), and traveled in the prairie. We here found a few bushes of the mesquite, the first we had seen. In the afternoon we saw below, in the valley, horses feeding, and we descended the hills with much difficulty into the canon, and found another village. The valley was here wider, and was full of small hills interspersed with mesquite bushes, that is, a kind of prickly green locust bush, which bears long narrow beans in bunches, of a very pleasant and sweet taste. In this village were about fifty lodges, much handsomer, too, than those in the other villages; and, as in the two former, there were multitudes of horses. I think that around the three camps there could not have been less than five thousand horses, and some of them most beautiful animals. Here, too, there was a medicine lodge of black skins, and closely shut up. We bought some meat and mesquite meal, made by grinding the beans between two stones. Here, also, there were no warriors. Several of the women had their legs cut and mangled by knives, as in the first village, where they had disturbed us all night by their lamentations. I know not how they had lost the men for whom they were mourning, but at the time I supposed that it had been done in the attack on the wagons. This day we traveled about sixteen miles, perhaps more.

Oct. 4. About two miles below the village we came to a large lake, and here Antonio wished us to leave this river and go to the south, until we struck the Mochico, crossing which, he assured us that in four or five days we would come upon the San Saba. Harris, however, who seemed destined always to go wrong, determined on following down the river on which we then were, and which he very wisely took to be the south fork of the Canadian. We traveled this day about fifteen miles, and encamped on the creek. The water was still fresh and running. Course still southeast.

Oct. 5. This day we killed another antelope, and encamped early upon the creek. While I was on the first guard, the hunters brought in a Cumanche horse which they had found, blind of one eye. At their approach almost every animal in company broke their ropes or drew their stakes. Had a yell been raised then we should not have saved one animal. Traveled this day about ten miles.

Oct. 6. This day we passed an old camp of the Cumanches, and followed their trail down the bed of the river, which here was dry. Encamped at night in a thicket of mesquite bushes near a large pond of water and where, for the first time, the river water was salt. It likewise began to wind around, keeping, however, its general course to the southeast. Traveled this day about fifteen miles.

Oct. 7. Started late, crossed the fork we had been so long traveling on, went over to the other, and encamped. These two forks are of the same size. In going from one to the other, we passed through a large level prairie, covered with tall mesquite bushes; and finding some very large, deep purple prickly pears, Lewis and myself ate of them, and the consequence was a terrible ague all night. The river bottom where we encamped was wide and grassy, and shaded with large cottonwood. Traveled this day near twenty miles, in a due southeast course. At night killed the Cumanche horse which had been brought in. Of this I partook, but just before dark two or three deer were killed close to camp. Encamped at the junction of the two forks.

Oct. 8.—Lay by this day.

Oct. 9.—Left early in the morning, crossed the river, and struck into the hills. The valley and the prairie had now disappeared, and we were in a country of broken, red, barren hills and deep gullies, then dry, but which must, in the spring, carry the whole water of the prairie into the branches of the Brazos and Red river. Lewis, Irwin and myself lost the company. We were on the right of the river. After waiting for the party for some time, we turned down to the river, but found no trail. We then went into the hills again, and followed the river up, and met with Bill Williams and seven or eight others, all lost. We traveled up the river till night, and then encamped together. We had plenty of meat, however. The next morning we separated again from Bill, took to the hills on the right, and followed down the river, nearly to a high hill which we had seen the day before. Finding still no trail, and imagining that the party had been farther from the river than we had, and had struck in again between us and the hill, we turned back and went up nearly to our old camp. Here we struck the trail and followed it till dark, and encamped within about four miles of the party, without water or food, having traveled that day nearly forty miles, through the worst country upon earth. We could hardly go five rods at a time without crossing a gully, and were often obliged to dismount, and sometimes we lost an hour in going up and down one of them, to find where to cross it. Just after dark we heard three guns fired in the direction of the river, and answered them by three more. This day we had seen a large signal smoke rise to the right behind a mountain, and another still farther below and answered it.

Oct. 11.—Went down to the river and found the party, got breakfast, scolded a while with Harris and started. We still kept down the river—though not following all its windings—and encamped on the southern bank of it. Traveled this day in a southern direction, about eighteen miles.

Oct. 12.—This day we crossed the river several times in the course of the forenoon; dug for water, which was, as usual salt. About noon five of us left the party, turned into the hills on the northeast side of the river, and left this fork of the Brazos forever. Striking our course for a hill which we saw at a distance, we traveled about twelve miles after leaving the party, and encamped by a hollow of water and among some mesquite bushes. Traveled today, in the whole, about twenty-two miles.

On reviewing our route thus far, it will appear that about 260 miles to the southeast of San Miguel, or 310 from Santa Fe, is the head of the branch of the Brazos upon which we had been traveling; that, keeping down this river to the distance of seventy-eight miles, still southeast, and then striking a due south course from the pond below the last Cumanche village, we should have reached the small creek Mochico in three days—that is, in the distance of forty miles; that, crossing this branch, which also runs a southeast course, we should have reached, in five days more (seventy miles) the Rio Azul, a river of clear running water, running also to the southeast and which is, without any doubt, the main branch of the Brazos; that keeping down this six or eight days, we should have reached the point where the San Saba joins it, turning up which river we should have passed the mouths of three branches running into it. Thus much we were informed by Manuel the Cumanche, before we left him, and it was corroborated by Antonio. One hundred and forty-six miles below the head (on the Del Resgate) another fork came in from the north and joined it; and 184 miles from the head of it, or 494 miles, nearly southeast of Santa Fe, we left the Del Resgate. It was here about fifty yards wide, containing water only here and there in holes.

The country upon which we entered after leaving the river was hilly, red and barren, thinly covered with mesquite bushes, and in the hollows with hackberry trees. At almost every step you could see marks of water, although at this time it was perfectly dry and hard. These general marks of inundation, the numerous gullies at every step, and the rough, washen appearance of the red hills, all prove that, in the spring the rush of water through this country must be tremendous, and travel, in any way, impossible. We supposed that we were about two days' journey from the Cross Timbers and on the waters of Red river. I had a horse and each of my companions a mule, and although we were in the midst of enemies we had little fear of not reaching the United States in safety. Besides Lewis and myself, our little party consisted of Irwin, Ish and Gillet. Irwin was an Englishman, who had just come by land from California— a brave, good-humored man, and not much afraid of anything save wild animals. Ish and Gillet were young men from Missouri, who had been hired by Harris in Santa Fe.

The latter was a mere boy—the former was much of a man, brave as a lion, active and industrious in the woods. Each man had a gun, and, with the exception of Irwin, a pistol or two. He, however, made up for this deficiency by bearing a double-barreled English fowling piece. We had, likewise, a plenty of ammunition and Spanish blankets.

I can not wonder that many men have chosen to pass their life in the woods, and I see nothing overdrawn or exaggerated in the character of Hawk-eye and Bushfield. There is so much independence and self-independence in the lonely hunter's life—so much freedom from law and restraint, from form and ceremony, that one who commences the life is almost certain to continue in it. With but few wants, and those easily supplied, a man feels none of the enthralments which surround him when connected with society. His gun and his own industry supply him with fire, food and clothing. He eats his simple meal, and has no one to thank for it except his Maker. He travels where he pleases, and sleeps whenever he feels inclined. If there is danger about, it comes from enemies, and not from the false friends, and when he enters a settlement, his former life renders it doubly tedious to him; he has forgotten the forms and ceremonies of the world; he has neglected his person, until neatness and scrupulous attention to the minutiae of appearance are wearisome to him; and he has contracted habits unfit for polished and well-bred society. Now, he can not sit cross-legged upon a blanket; instead of his common and luxurious lounging position, he must be confined rigidly to a chair. His pipe must be laid aside and his simple dress is exchanged for the cumbersome and confined trappings of the gentleman. In short, he is lost, and he betakes himself to the woods again for pure ennui; and the first night on which he builds his fire, puts up his meat to roast and lies down upon the ground, with the open sky above him, and the cool, clear, healthy wind fanning his cheek, seems to him like the beginning of a better and freer life.

Oct. 13.—We started this morning early, and at noon we reached another and still larger branch of the Brazos, running the same course (to the southeast). We crossed it, and rested on the north bank, near a large hole of water in the bed of the river, but which was so immensely salt that our animals would not drink it. I tasted some of it from the tip of my finger, and it is no exaggeration when I say that it was as salt as the water of the ocean. It was, in fact, perfect brine, of a deep yellow color, so deeply was it impregnated with salt.
After stopping two hours, we went down the river a short distance among the mesquite bushes, and Lewis shot a young doe and Ish an old buck. We cut up and packed the meat, crossed the river, and kept on towards the southeast, which course we had pursued all day. Just at night we came upon the river again, crossed it, and encamped on the other side of it, in a small thicket of bushes. This afternoon we, had seen an abundance of horse tracks, and marks of lodge poles, and we concluded that there must be a village of Cumanches not far above where we encamped. Here we dug several holes in the bed of the river, which was a hundred yards wide, and contained water in holes. It was all alike salt, and we found it impossible to drink it. We foolishly cooked part of our deer and ate it; and more foolishly still, some of us added salt, of which I had a little in my pocket. At dusk we put out our fire and would have slept well had we not dreamed of drinking huge draughts of water. Once in the night I conceived myself lying flat by a river, with the water touching my lips, but entirely unable
to get a drop out of it into my mouth. Traveled east about eighteen miles.

Oct. 14.—Left the river early and bore to the northeast. About 10 in the forenoon we came in sight of the river again to the right of it; descended into a deep, narrow valley running into the river at the right angles, and containing the. bed of a little stream, which we followed up for two miles partly searching for water, and partly because we were unable to cross it. Found no water; crossed it high up, and took our course again. About 2 in the afternoon we came upon the river again, still to the right, and turning a course parallel with us, bore down towards it, and came upon a deep, rocky hollow, running into it, and containing water in holes. Tormented with intense thirst, and with the heat of the day, we were rejoiced at finding water, and not more for ourselves than for our animals, who were trembling under us with weakness, and wearing that dim, glassy look in their eyes which they always have when suffering from thirst. Drove them down the canon, at the risk of breaking their necks, and followed them. We found the water very salty, but we could drink it. It seemed as if our animals would never become satiated with the water; they returned to it again and again, and stood pawing in it whenever they were allowed to get to it, until after dark. The quantities which we ourselves drank of it were immense. The large wooden Cumanche bowl, which Irwin bore, and which held about a pint and a half, was but a single draught for either of us and for half an hour it was hardly out of the hands of one of us before it was in those of another; and so salty was the water that it had hardly passed down our throats before we were as thirsty as ever. Before we slept that night I hesitate not to say that we each drank three gallons of this water. After smoking, eating and drinking, we slept, only disturbed by the noise of a bear, which came tumbling down the side of a hollow, close to us. We traveled this day about twelve miles to the northeast.

Oct. 15.—This morning we turned to the east, and left this river, which we there named the Salt Fork of the Brazos, or, in good Spanish, the "Brazo Salado." Part of the morning we traveled in a high prairie or table land, and we then dame to a place where this table sunk down abruptly into a lower country. Here we descended into a long, narrow valley between the abrupt sides of the upper table land, which seemed to look back upon them, to be mountains rising out of the plain. The country ahead, too, was very hilly and broken. About 10 we arrived at a large, clear, limestone spring of water, where we stopped and drank plentifully; from this spring a small stream of water ran down the valley, in a course nearly northeast. We followed the valley down, and crossed this hollow about forty times. The valley was full of horse tracks and signs of Indians, and still, the temptation of a large catfish or two which we saw in the spring under the shelving rocks, was enough to induce us to fire a shot or two at them, which, however, was unsuccessful. About two miles below the spring, we encamped on the edge of the branch, in green, heavy grass, and close to an abundance of hackberry trees, with good, fresh water. The valley was here running a course nearly northeast—and after dinner we continued that course, until weary of crossing the creek; we bent more to the east and left it to our left; crossed the point of a hill, and left a high and conspicuous conical hill to the right, about six miles beyond which we emerged from the broken hills into the mesquite, covering the bottom on the edge of another river, about as wide as the Salt Fork, and of the same character. Just on the descent to the river was an old enclosure, which had been built by the Cumanches of brush, and a circle surrounded with converging poles, which reminded me of the threshing floors of the New Mexicans. Passing through the mesquite, we reached the river, and found water, but saltier, if possible, than the former. While we were sitting on our animals, watching them put their mouths to the water and refuse it, Lewis raised a laugh by observing that if Tom Banks reached that river he would have salt tea enough— alluding to his verbiage about Saltillo. This branch ran the same course as the former, and we supposed joined it not far below. Crossed it and went up to the high mesquite prairie on the other side of it and encamped without water.

We now supposed ourselves to be on the north side of Red river, but we were immensely out of the matter. Traveled this day eighteen miles; gained perhaps twelve east.

Oct. 16.—Our route this day lay in the forenoon through a level prairie covered with mesquite bushes. We now began to hope that we should soon arrive at the open prairie. But at noon we came upon a break of the prairie into low, uneven ground, and saw away in front of us what appeared to be a large river. Here Lewis went out, killed a deer and brought it in whole. After dinner, I delayed in camp until the party were two miles ahead. About three miles from camp we passed a small hill with a pile of stones on the summit— probably the fruits of the superstition of the Cumanches. At night we encamped on a small branch of salt water, which runs into the river. Here we saw a bear, but could not get a shot at him. Today traveled about fifteen miles northeast.

Oct. 17.—Crossed the river, which is about twenty yards, or perhaps thirty, wide—sandy, and with little water, like all the rest; and like them, too, running to the southeast. After crossing the river, we continued on about three miles, and crossed a branch of the same stream, running with clear but very salt water through a grassy valley. After crossing, we kept up the branch for some distance, and ascended into the prairie, which was still clothed with mesquite bushes. Here we tried in vain to kill a deer, and stopped at noon on a deep hollow with brackish water. In the afternoon we kept on through the prairie and towards night came upon a hole of muddy water, beat up, as well as. surrounded by innumerable horse tracks. Here we concluded to pass the night; and immediately on stopping, Ish pointed out to us four or five wild horses very quietly feeding not far from the water. Lewis and he accordingly went out with the intention of killing one; and after several shots succeeded, and returned to camp bearing a portion of the animal. Fire had been made in the meantime, and every man was soon busily employed in roasting horse meat. Before we had time to eat, however, a sudden trampling was heard approaching, and we stood to our arms, when suddenly about a hundred horses came careering down towards the water. They had approached within thirty yards of us before they discovered us, when, with a general snort, they galloped swiftly by us. As they passed, Ish discharged his big guji, which added wings to their terror, and they were soon out of sight and hearing, and we returned to our cooking. Upon eating our meat, we found it far from unpleasant. It was tender, sweet and very fat; and on the whole is far preferable to the meat of a lean deer. The choice piece in a horse is under the mane; and this we left roasting under the coals, wrapped in the skin, until morning. After this, two or three of us went out on the track of the horses, and about two hundred yards from camp we found a beautiful roan filly dead—the effects of Ish's big gun. Of this animal we took a small portion and returned to camp, and, for the sake of satisfying my curiosity, I took with me the tongue. This part of the beast I found not very palatable. It seems astonishing that from the few horses introduced so short a time since into America by the Spaniards, there should now be such immense herds in the prairie, and in the possession of the Aboriginals. Hardly a day passed without our seeing a herd of them, either quietly feeding or careering off wildly in the distance. They are the most beautiful sight to be met with in the prairie. Of all colors, but most commonly of a bay, and with their manes floating in the wind, they form a most beautiful contrast to the heavy, unwieldy herds of buffalo, which seem, even at their best speed, to be moved by some kind of clumsy machinery. Some old patriarch always heads the gang and takes the command over them. We were witnesses oh one particular occasion to an example of communication between these, animals which proves them possessed of something nearly allied to the power of speech. We had seen a herd feeding at a distance, and we watched them to see what effect would be produced upon them, when they should receive our smell in the air, or, as hunters say, the wind of us, which was blowing across our path in their direction. On feeling it, they started in a slow trot, headed, as usual, by a noble-looking old patriarch.
Three only of the whole herd were bold enough to separate and take another direction. On discovering the defection of his troops, the old chief turned back, and the whole herd halted. Trotting briskly to the three deserters, he communicated with them for a moment or two, and, probably finding remonstrances unavailing, started back and put his followers in motion, quickly accelerating their gait to a gallop. You may see the leader sometimes before, and sometimes behind his troops, biting them and urging them on by every means in his power. As to the tale of their keeping one of the number as sentinels, I believe nothing of it. Their acute smell gives them sufficient warning and does away the need of a sentry. We traveled today about fifteen miles in a course nearly east-northeast.

Oct. 18.—Left camp in the morning, after a hearty meal of horse meat, and traveled through a high mesquite prairie. The bushes, however, began to grow thinner and smaller, and we now hoped to reach speedily to the high open prairie, an event which we anxiously looked for. About noon we fell off from the prairie into a bottom of good land covered with thick hackberry trees, and in a short distance came upon a creek about twenty yards wide, running clear water, but salt. This is a branch of the Red river. Here we nooned, and for the first time saw a flock of wild turkeys, out of which we killed one. Leaving our camping ground, we crossed the creek and kept down it some distance and then turned to the east. Towards night we struck another branch, and followed the bed of it to the mouth, where it joined the creek on which we nooned, and here we encamped. The water of the creek which ran rippling over the stones, reminding us of the clear streams of our own country and the mountains, was very salt, but there was a small tide of good water (that is, not too salt to drink) in the bed of the creek. Here we ate our turkey, with the addition of a little horse meat to relieve the dryness of it. This day we traveled perhaps fifteen miles east-northeast.

Oct. 19.—This morning we finished our horse meat, and followed the course of the creek two or three miles and found sweet water under a bluff rock in the bed of the river. We had for several days been tormented by constant thirst, for salt water satisfies a man only while he is drinking it. We now drank enough to satiate us, and took a general smoke upon the occasion. We then struck into the prairie, and Lewis killed a fat buck. We then turned down to a branch of standing water and nooned; and in cooking our dinner, we set the long grass of the bottom on fire and had a noble blaze and smoke. We ate our dinner and left it burning, not without apprehensions of its being observed by Indians. We still kept o