LIMESTONE QUARRY — BITTER CREEK. 55 



Near the quarry was a spring of pure cold water. A vein of trap, 

 about six inches wide, passed perpendicularly through the quarry, 

 and had evidently affected the rocks on either side. Leaving this 

 spot, we struck across to the south, and joined the camp, which 

 had been pitched just below a large warm spring that comes bub- 

 bling out of the ground and forms immediately a small stream. 

 Temperature of the spring, 71°. 



Above the mouth of Warm Spring Creek, the hills become in- 

 creased in height, and a lofty range runs north by west, evidently 

 thrown up by internal convulsions, the strata having a considerable 

 dip to the south-west. The banks of the Platte where it cuts 

 through the range are apparently perpendicular, and from a dis- 

 tance appeared to be composed of red sandstone. The general 

 dip of the rocks, where not disturbed, seems still to be toward the 

 south-west, though very slight. 



Auguste Tesson, one of my very best men, was taken sick to- 

 day with something very like the cholera. 



Thursday, July 19. — Bar. 25.68; Ther. 80°. Leaving the 

 valley of the Warm Spring Branch, the road crosses over to a 

 branch of Bitter Creek, an affluent of the Platte, down the valley 

 of which it winds until it reaches the main stream. We followed 

 this valley the whole day, crossing the stream several times, and 

 encamped on its left bank after a short march of ten and a-half 

 miles. We were detained here the following day by the extreme 

 illness of Auguste, who was unable to be removed. We passed 

 to-day the nearly consumed fragments of about a dozen wagons 

 that had been broken up and burned by their owners ; and near 

 them was piled up, in one heap, from six to eight hundred weight 

 of bacon, thrown away for want of means to transport it farther. 

 Boxes, bonnets, trunks, wagon- wheels, whole wagon-bodies, cook- 

 ing utensils, and, in fact, almost every article of household furni- 

 ture, were found from place to place along the prairie, abandoned 

 for the same reason. In the evening. Captain Duncan, of the 

 Rifles, with a small escort, rode into camp. He had left Fort 

 Laramie in the morning, and was in hot pursuit of four deserters, 

 who had decamped with an equal number of the best horses be- 

 longing to the command. 



Bitter Creek is a fine clear stream, about fifty feet wide, with a 

 swift current, and seems, from the great heaps of drift-wood piled 

 up on its banks, to discharge a large quantity of water in the 

 spring. 



