we journeyed on the line usually followed by the trapping and hunting
parties of the Kansas and Delaware Indians, game of every kind continued
very shy and wild. The bottoms which form the immediate valley of the main
river were generally about three miles wide; having a rich soil of black
vegetable mould, and, for a prairie country, well interspersed with wood.
The country was everywhere covered with a considerable variety of grasses,
occasionally poor and thin, but far more frequently luxuriant and rich. We
had been gradually and regularly ascending in our progress westward, and
on the evening of the 14th, when we encamped on a little creek in the
valley of the Republican, 265 miles by our traveling road from the mouth
of the Kansas, we were at an elevation of 1,520 feet. That part of the
river where we were now encamped is called by the Indians the _Big
Timber_. Hitherto our route had been laborious and extremely slow, the
unusually wet spring and constant rain having so saturated the whole
country that it was necessary to bridge every water-course, and, for days
together, our usual march averaged only five or six miles. Finding that at
such a rate of travel it would be impossible to comply with your
instructions, I determined at this place to divide the party, and, leaving
Mr. Fitzpatrick with twenty-five men in charge of the provisions and
heavier baggage of the camp, to proceed myself in advance, with a light
party of fifteen men, taking with me the howitzer and the light wagon
which carried the instruments.

Accordingly, on the morning of the 16th, the parties separated; and,
bearing a little out from the river, with a view of heading some of the
numerous affluents, after a few hours' travel over somewhat broken ground,
we entered upon an extensive and high level prairie, on which we encamped
towards evening at a little stream, where a single dry cottonwood afforded
the necessary fuel for preparing supper. Among a variety of grasses which
to-day made their first appearance, I noticed bunch-grass,