154 - NOTES TAKEN. 
agony. I was obliged to change him for one of the led horses 
an impatient, nervous creature, who in crossing gave me fall 
the second in the quicksands along shore. 
On the top of the bank we struck a Camanche trail, very 
broad, and made by the lodge poles, which they transport 
from place to place in their wanderings by fastening them on 
each side of their pack horses, leaving the long ends trailing 
upon the ground, giving the trail very much the appearance 
of a carriage road, in so much so that one of our party 
remarked—without thinking that these lords of the plains 
. Were obliged to eschew carriages of any kind—that “we must 
soon overtake them, for here was the track of the chiefs’ 
travelling carriage,” an idea that caused much merriment. 
The country was now broken and rugged in the extreme 
for some miles, and until we came to the plain, upon the 
western border of which stood the singular knobs we had 
seen in the distance. One of these knobs—at the base of 
which we passed —particularly attracted our attention. It 
rose several hundred feet above the surface in alternate 
terraces of gray limestone, the whole forming a bell-shaped 
mound, perfect in outline, and a landmark to the traveller for 
a long distance. 
Passing this range of knobs, we entered the most barren, 
rugged and broken country we had yet met with, covered 
with stunted mesquite trees and dwarf cedar, the ground 
one mass of broken rocks, 
Sunset found us toiling along, weary and half famished 
