SELECTION OF ROUTE ACROSS THE PLAINS. 
21 
across this continent, and I have therefore considered it proper to enter fully into the subject, 
that the facilities for this purpose, presented hy the route'I have explored, may be fully estimated. 
Of the selection of a route across the 'plains .—So long as the transportation to California by 
sea continues to be so difficult and expensive, and the value of stock of all kinds in that State 
so great, a vast excess of emigration, which is in a great measure confined to persons whose 
means are limited, must pursue the overland routes. The emigrants expect and are entitled to 
protection by the government, and the consideration of the measures to effect this object has 
become of vast importance. 
The almost insuperable difficulties which surround the establishment of a line of military 
posts on the plains, which are exposed, without fuel or the means of constructing- shelters, to 
all the rigors of the seasons, and far from points where even the necessaries of life are to be 
procured, forced to occupy a region possessing neither agriculture nor miner;T resources, and 
doomed by nature to perpetual solitude, would seem to render it a matter of the extremest im¬ 
portance to shorten such a line as much as possible, and with that view to select a route which 
should cross these deserts at their narrowest point. 
A consideration of secondary, but still of great consequence, would point to the location of the 
route through a region in which the extremes of heat and cold are least known, and in which 
unexpected difficulties or unavoidable delays would not subject the emigrant to extreme suffer¬ 
ings from cold and hunger, which have proved fatal in so many instances. 
In a military point of view this would seem nearly of equal importance. Although the 
departure and movement of military expeditions across the plains can be arranged with a fore¬ 
sight which will secure-them against the probability of such exposure, yet, as a question of ex¬ 
pediency, it would be far wiser to select a military route which can be traversed without difficulty 
at any season of the year. 
A very hasty examination of the country exhibits the fact that the vast deserts between the 
valley of the Eio G-rande and the frontiers of the western States contract to their least width 
along the belt of country between the 32d and 34th parallels of latitude. The average distance 
of six hundred and fifty miles over these vast deserts is here reduced to less than three hundred 
miles, and along a route where the extremes of heat and cold are absolutely unknown. 
For three hundred and eleven miles west of the eastern line of the prairies, the belt of country 
along the 33d parallel presents absolutely a combination of all the favorable circumstances 
which I have suggested as necessary to the establishment of a chain of military posts. The 
line of posts along the route traverses the heart of the country occupied by the most powerful 
tribe of Indians west of the Mississippi; intersects the wooded districts in which they are forced 
to seek shelter from the horrors of a winter on the prairies ; separates the Indians of Texas 
from those of the northern plains ; presents numerous points, offering every facility of wood, 
water, and grass, for the establishment of a military post; crosses the principal rivers of Texas 
at no great distance from the heads of their navigation, at which can be established depots of sup¬ 
plies; traverses a region of fertile soil and abundant timber, affording every advantage to the 
settler, and of mild and genial temperature at every season of the year ; and, finally, avoids more 
than one-half the desert country between the Eocky mountains and the valley of the Mississippi. 
It commences on the Eed river at a point navigable by steamboats, and connects by a good road, 
constantly travelled, with the Arkansas river below the head of its navigation. 
The only obstacle on this route, and one which alone has prevented it from becoming the 
great and only highway across the plains, is the want of water on the Llano Estacado, over a 
distance of one hundred and twenty-five miles ; but this difficulty, as will be exhibited hereafter, 
may be obviated so easily, and at so little expense, that it cannot weigh as a feather in the 
balance against the unrivalled advantages of this route. 
Of the three hundred miles of desert along the route, nearly two hundred are through a 
region affording water in abundance and fuel entirely sufficient for camping purposes ; and the 
