THE CIMARRON. 197 
some two hundred miles above the False Wa- 
shita, informed me, that, while in some places 
he found it not over fifty yards wide, in others 
it was at least five hundred. This and most 
other prairie streams have commonly very 
low banks with remarkably shallow channels, 
which, during droughts, sometimes go dry in 
their transit through the sandy plains.* 
It would be neither interesting nor profita- 
ble to present to my readers a detailed ac- 
count of all the tributaries of the three princi- 
pal rivers already mentioned. They may be 
* Of all the rivers of this character, the Cimarron, being on the 
route from Missouri to Santa Fé, has become Farah ech" 
Its water disa i sand and reappears again any 
places, that some travellers have contended that it « acho ond Seni 
periodically. This is doubtless owing to An Sage: that the little cur- 
rent which may flow above the sand in hin 9 or in cloudy 
weather, is kept dried eo in an ace oe the hot 
sunny days. But in laces on is - yeas that the 
water moe et above tt, it, except during freshets. 
once greatly upon encountering one of these 
candy sgexogs a von river after a tremendous rain-storm. Our 
att 
the « 
little =a night fall, a dismal, murky cloud was seen piling in 
the western horizon, which very soon came sf ho upon us, dri- 
ven by a hurricane, and bringing with it one of those tremendous 
bursts of thunder and lightning, and rain, which render the storms 
of the Prairies, like those of of theti0 pics, so terrible. Hail-stones, 
as large as turkeys’ eggs, and cane ts of rain soon drenched the 
whole country; and so rapidly were the banks of the river over- 
flowed, that the most active exertions ec ot site to nt ti 
mules that were «staked? in the valley from drowning. Next morn 
i : neck of a bend, we were, : the distance of 
about three miles, the river-bank again; when, to our aston- 
flowi & there! 
a pata _ other similar ‘ dry 
streams,’ travellers procure water by excavating basins in the chan- 
nel, a few feet deep, into which the ae is is flicnind from the satu- 
rated sand. 
7" 
