120 TRANS. OF THE ACAD. OF SCIENCE. 



Altitude of Pike's Peak and other points in Colorado 

 Territory. By Dr. G. Engelmann. 



Though the elevation of the Rocky Mountains from the 

 British down to the Mexican boundary, and the configuration 

 of that whole country, is now pretty well known through the 

 explorations begun by Fremont, twenty years ago, and con- 

 tinued so extensively by the Mexican boundary survey, and 

 principally by the different explorations of routes for a Pa- 

 cific railroad, it has so happened that the Pike's Peak region 

 has been almost entirely neglected. The then Captain Fre- 

 mont had, in July, 1843, passed down eastward of the moun- 

 tains, examined part of the South Platte, the Boiling Spring 

 at the eastern base of the Peak, and other points in that dis- 

 trict, and ascertained the altitude of several of them. On his 

 return from California he passed, in June, 1844, through the 

 three "Parks" to the upper headwaters of the Arkansas river 

 and to the westward and southward of Pike's Peak. Being 

 now left without barometers, his only means of determining 

 elevations was by the temperature of boiling water, which in 

 a few instances he made use of with a very good approxi- 

 mate result. The height of the Peak he never determined. 



But we have two much older estimates (we cannot call 

 them calculations) of the altitude of Pike's Peak. The dis- 

 coverer and first chronicler of these mountain regions — the 

 energetic and indefatigable Capt. Zebulon M. Pike, after 

 whom the "principal peak," as he calls it in his quaint and 

 curious "Account,"! has been named — lias himself (Dec. 3, 



•J- "An Account of Expeditions to the Sources of the Mississippi, and 

 through the Western part of Louisiana, &c, in the years 1805, 1806 and 

 1807. Philadelphia. 1810.'' — Pike first saw the mountains from the Ar- 

 kansas, Nov. 15, 1806; Nov. 24th to 28th he explored the "north fork » 

 of the Arkansas, evidently the Font aine-qui-boutt, without however dis- 

 covering the famous ?pring itself, anil ascended a chain south of the peak, 

 from which "the summit of the grand peak, which was entirely hare of 

 vegeta'ion and covered with snow, appeared at a distance of 15 or 16 

 miles from us, and as high again as we had ascended." Pike with his 

 few followers, during December and January, wandered about the moun- 

 tains in search of the sources of Red river, and visited the headwaters of 

 the South Platte, the Arkansas, and at last the Rio Grande, whare he was 

 taken prisoner by the Spaniards of New Mexico. The following account 

 is now of some historical interest, since that country has acquired so 

 much importance. In the Appendix to Part 3, p. 16, Pike relates how he 

 met in Santa Fe one James Pursley, from Bairdstown, Ky., "the first 

 American who ever penetrated the immense wilds of Louisiana," and 

 who, after many adventures with the Indians, as whose captive he got 

 into the Pike's Peak region, came to Santa Fe'. " He assured me," he 

 continues, that he " found gold on the head of La Pla te, and had carried 

 some of the virgin mineral in his shot-pouch for months" — that "the 

 Spaniards had frequently solicited him to go and show a detachment of 

 cavalry the place, but that, conceiving it to be our territory, he had re- 

 fused." 



