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X2 Ex. Doc. No. 41. 



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has cost many volunteers their horses, and entailed trouble without 

 end on many inexperinced travellers ^'westward bound.'' The 

 next day immense herds of the buffalo were seen. 



We were now on ground (see map of July 10th) which is tra-' 

 versed by the nomadic tribes of Pawnees, Sioux, Osages, and oc-' 

 casionally the Comanches- Their range is seldom farther east than 

 Council Grove. The country thence, to the western borders of 

 Missouri, is in the hands of Indians owing allegiance to, and re- 

 ceiving stipends from the United States j they live in log-houses, 

 cultivate the soil, rear cattle, and pursue some of the arts of peace. 

 They form the connecting link between the savage of the plains 

 and the white man of the States. 



The latitude of our camp, a few thousand feet southeast of where 

 the road crosses the Pawnee Fork, is 38^ 10^ 10''; and the longi- 

 tude, by chronometer, %s 98"" 55' 22". The height above the sea,, 

 indicated approximately by the barometer, is 1,932 feet; the point,! 

 as will be seen on the map, is but a short distance from the June- ^ 

 tion of the Pawnee Fork and the Arkansas river. 



The section ojf country embraced between this point and Bent^s^ 

 Fort is totally different in character from that just described, but 

 the change is gradual, and may be anticipated from what has been* 

 said in referrence to the appearance of the country so far erst as f 

 the 9Sth degree, or even the 97th meridian. m 



^ The position of ourcamp near Bent's Fort, determined by 29 al- 

 titudes of polaris and 35 circum-meridian altitudes of alpha aquilee, 

 is 38 02' 53," and the longitude, by the measurement of distances 

 between c and the * alpha aquils and the * spica virginis, is 103* 

 01', agreeing within 34^. with the chronometric determination of 

 the same point,— (See Appendix.) 



Our route from Pawnee Fork to this point, w^as along the Arkan- 

 sas^river. The approximate height of Bent's Fort above the sea is 

 3,958 feet, and the height where we first struck the Hver, at the 

 bend, is 1,658 feet, the distance between these two points bein^^311 

 miles, the fall of the river is about seven feet and four-tenths per 

 mile. Its bed is of sand, sometimes of rounded pebbles of the pri- 

 mitive rock. It is seldom more than 150 yards wide, and, but foi* 

 the quicksands, is every where fordable. The bottom land, a few 

 feet above the level of the water, varies in width from half a mile 

 to two miles, and is generally covered with good nutritious grass. 

 Beyond this the ground rises by gentle slopes into a wilderness of 

 sand hills on the south and into prairie on the north. There are 

 one or two exceptions; for instance, at the great bend, the sandhills 

 from the south impinge abruptly on the course of the river; at 

 Pawnee rock, a long swell in the ground terminates in an abrupt 

 hill of highly ferrucrinous sand stone; and ten miles above Cho- 

 teau's island, the hiils along the river are vertical, as if the river 

 had cut a passage through them; and as you approach Bent's Fort, 

 the hills generally roll in more boldly on the river, and the bottoms 

 become narrower, and the grass more precious. 



At these places the geological formation can be seen distinctly. 

 On the lower part of the river it is a conglomerate of pebbles, 

 "ometimes shells cemented by lime and clay overlaying a stratum 



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