who, inspired by the inducement he held out to them, cheerfully
invested five thousand dollars in merchandise suited to the demands
of the trade, and were eager to attempt with him the passage of
the great plains. In this expedition there were thirty men, and
the amount of money in the undertaking was the largest that had yet
been ventured. The progress of the little caravan was without
extraordinary incident, until it arrived at "The Caches" on the
Upper Arkansas. There Becknell, who was in reality a man of the
then "Frontier," bold, plucky, and endowed with excellent sense,
conceived the ridiculous idea of striking directly across the country
for Santa Fe through a region absolutely unexplored; his excuse
for this rash movement being that he desired to avoid the rough and
circuitous mountain route he had travelled on his first trip to Taos.

His temerity in abandoning the known for the unknown was severely
punished, and his brave men suffered untold misery, barely escaping
with their lives from the terrible straits to which they were reduced.
Not having the remotest conception of the region through which their
new trail was to lead them, and naturally supposing that water would
be found in streams or springs, when they left the Arkansas they
neglected to supply themselves with more than enough of the precious
fluid to last a couple of days. At the end of that time they learned,
too late, that they were in the midst of a desert, with all the
tortures of thirst threatening them.

Without a tree or a path to guide them, they took an irregular course
by observations of the North Star, and the unreliable needle of an
azimuth pocket-compass. There was a total absence of water, and when
what they had brought with them in their canteens from the river was
exhausted, thirst began its horrible office. In a short time both men