18 FROM FORT LEAVENWORTH TO FORT KEARNY. 



small party of travellers, with a sick man in a wagon. They proved 

 to be retm^ning emigrants, who, after proceeding as far as Fort 

 Kearny, had lost heart, sold out all they had, (their flour and 

 bacon at one cent per pound,) and were now slowly and sadly 

 wending their way back to their homes. They assured us that 

 many more were in the same melancholy case. Day's march, 

 fourteen miles. 



Jime 6.— Camp up by 4 A. M. Bar. 28.75 ; Ther. 70°. Wind 

 south-east ; clouds heavy and threatening. It shortly commenced 

 raining hard, and continued until nearly noon. The ground to-day 

 has been strewed with pebbles of granite, quartz, and porphyry, 

 and also with large blocks of porphyritic granite. On the tops of 

 the hills, limestone again appeared ; it was non-fossiliferous, and 

 rather sandy. About five miles from camp we crossed a small 

 stream, from which were procured some specimens of spirifer. 

 Under this rock was a non-fossiliferous stratum and then shale. 

 The upper stratum was not in place. In the afternoon we passed 

 a melancholy memento of disappointed hope and blasted enter- 

 prise — four freshly-made graves of emigrants, who had died by the 

 way, and were here left on the wide waste, with not a name to pre- 

 serve their remembrance. How different such a fate from the high 

 and sanguine prospects with which they had set out ! 



In the evening a heavy thunder-storm from the south-east, with 

 rain and violent wind. Day's travel, twenty miles. 



June 7.— Bar. 28.43; Ther. 68°. The travelling to-day is 

 heavy, in consequence of the rains of yesterday. The road lies 

 through a rolling prairie and upon a ridge dividing the waters 

 of the Missouri fjom those of the Big Blue river, a tributary of 

 the Kansas. Met a Mr, Brulet, a French trader, from Fort La- 

 ramie, with a large train of wagons, laden with packs of buffalo- 

 robes, bound for St. Louis. He had been forty days on the road, 

 and had met not less than four thousand wagons, averaging four 

 persons to a wagon. This large number of emigrants appeared to 

 him to be getting along rather badly, from their want of experi- 

 ence as to the proper mode of travelling on the prairies, to which 

 cause much of the suffering experienced on these plains is doubt- 

 less to be ascribed. We availed ourselves of his offer to carry 

 back letters to our friends at home. 



In the course of the mor^iing, passed the fresh grave of a poor 

 fellow whose last resting-place had been partially disturbed by the 

 wolves. They had burrowed a large hole near the head, which, 



