The Platte River and Fort Kearney, August 10.
After a long and chilly night—extensive evaporation making 40° F. feel excessively cold—lengthened by the atrocity of the musquetoes, which sting even when the thermometer stands below 45°, we awoke upon the hill sands divided by two miles of level green savanna, and at 4 A.M. reached Kearney Station, in the valley of La Grande Platte, seven miles from the fort of that name. The first aspect of the stream was one of calm and quiet beauty, which, however, it owed much to its accessories: some travelers have not hesitated to characterize it as “the dreariest of rivers.” On the south is a rolling range of red sandy and clayey hillocks, sharp toward the river—the “coasts of the Nebraska.” The valley, here two miles broad, resembles the ocean deltas of great streams; it is level as a carpet, all short green grass without sage or bush. It can hardly be called a bottom, the rise from the water’s edge being, it is calculated, about 4 feet per 1000. Under a bank, from half a yard to a yard high, through its two lawns of verdure, flowed the stream straight toward the slanting rays of the rising sun, which glittered upon its broad bosom, and shed rosy light over half the heavens. In places it shows a sea horizon, but here it was narrowed by Grand Island, which is fifty-two miles long, with an average breadth of one mile and three quarters, and sufficiently elevated above the annual flood to be well timbered.
Without excepting even the Missouri, the Platte is doubtless the most important western influent of the Mississippi. Its valley offers a route scarcely to be surpassed for natural gradients, requiring little beyond the superstructure for light trains; and by following up its tributary—the Sweetwater—the engineer finds a line laid down by nature to the foot of the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains, the dividing ridge between the Atlantic and the Pacific water-beds. At present the traveler can cross the 300 or 400 miles of desert between the settlements in the east and the populated parts of the western mountains by its broad highway, with never-failing supplies of water, and, in places, fuel. Its banks will shortly supply coal to take the place of the timber that has thinned out.
The Canadian voyageurs first named it La Platte, the Flat River, discarding, or rather translating after their fashion, the musical and picturesque aboriginal term, “Nebraska,” the “shallow stream :”the word has happily been retained for the Territory. Springing from the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains, it has, like all the valley streams westward of the Mississippi, the Niobrara, or Eau qui court,[1] the Arkansas, and the Canadian River, a declination to the southeast. From its mouth to the junction of its northern and southern forks, the river valley is mostly level, and -the scenery is of remarkable sameness: its singularity in this point affects the memory. There is not a tributary, not a ravine, in places not a tree to distract attention from the grassy intermediate bottom, which, plain as a prairie, extends from four to five and even twelve miles in width, bounded on both sides by low, rolling, sandy hills, thinly vegetated, and in few places showing dwarf bluffs. Between the forks and Fort Laramie the ground is more accented, the land near its banks often becomes precipitous, the. road must sometimes traverse the tongues and ridges which project into the valley, and in parts the path is deep with sand. The stream averages about a mile in breadth, and sometimes widens out into the semblance of an estuary, flowing in eddies where holes are, and broken by far-reaching sand-bars and curlew shallows. In places it is a labyrinth of islets, variously shaped and of all sizes, from the long tongue which forms a vista to the little bouquet of cool verdure, grass, young willows, and rose-bushes. The shallowness of the bed causes the water to be warm in summer; a great contrast to the clear, cool springs on its banks. The sole is treacherous in the extreme, full of quicksands and gravel shoals, channels and cuts, which shift, like those of the Indus, with each year’s flood; the site being nearly level, the river easily swells, and the banks, here of light, there of dark colored silt, based, like the floor, on sand, are, though vertical, rarely more than two feet high. It is a river willfully wasted by nature. The inundation raises it to about six feet throughout: this freshet, however, is of short duration, and the great breadth of the river causes a want of depth which renders it unfit for the navigation of a craft more civilized than the Indian’s birch or the Canadian fur-boat. Colonel Frémont failed to descend it in September with a boat drawing only four inches. The water, like that of the Missouri, and for the same reason, is surcharged with mud drained from the prairies; carried from afar, it has usually a dark tinge; it is remarkably opaque after floods; if a few inches deep, it looks bottomless, and, finally, it contains little worth fishing for. From the mouth to Fort Kearney, beyond which point timber is rare, one bank, and one only, is fringed with narrow lines of well-grown cotton-wood, red willows, and cedars, which are disappearing before the emigrant’s axe, The cedar now becomes an important tree. It will not grow on the plains, owing to the dryness of the climate and the excessive cold; even in the sheltered ravines the wintry winds have power to blight all the tops that rise above prairie level, and where the locality is better adapted for plantations, firs prevail. An interesting effect of climate upon the cedar is quoted by travelers on the Missouri River. At the first Cedar Island (48° N. lat.) large and straight trees appear in the bottom lands, those on the bluffs being of inferior growth; higher up the stream they diminish, seldom being seen in any number together above the mouth of the Little Cheyenne (45° N. lat.), and there they are exceedingly crooked and twisted. In the lignite formations above the Missouri and the Yellow Stone, the cedar, unable to support itself above ground, spreads over the hill-sides and presents the appearance of grass or moss.
Beyond the immediate banks of the Platte the soil is either sandy, quickly absorbing water, or it is a hard, cold, unwholesome clay, which long retains muddy pools, black with decayed vegetation, and which often, in the lowest levels, becomes a mere marsh. The wells deriving infiltration from the higher lands beyond are rarely more than three feet deep; the produce is somewhat saline, and here and there salt may be seen efflorescing from the soil around them. In the large beds of prêle (an equisetum), scouring rush, and other aquatic plants which garnish the banks, myriads of musquetoes find a home. Flowers of rich, warm color appear, we remark, in the sandy parts: the common wild helianthus and a miniature sunflower like chamomile, a thistle (Carduus leucographus), the cactus, a peculiar milk-plant (Asclepias syrivea), a spurgewort (Asclepias tuberosa), the amorpha, the tradescantia, the putoria, and the artemisia, or prairie sage. The richer soils and ravines produce in abundance the purple aster — violet of these regions —a green plant, locally known as “Lamb's Quarters,” a purple flower with bulbous root, wild flax with pretty blue blossoms, besides mallow, digitalis, anemone, streptanthis, and a honeysuckle. In parts the valley of the Platte is a perfect parterre of wild flowers.
After satisfying hunger with vile bread and viler coffee—how far from the little forty-berry cup of Egypt!—for which we paid 75 cents, we left Kearney Station without delay. Hugging the right bank of our strange river, at 8 A.M. we found ourselves at Fort Kearney, so called, as is the custom, after the gallant officer, now deceased, of that name.
Every square box or block-house in these regions is a fort; no misnomer, however, can be more complete than the word applied to the military cantonments on the frontier. In former times the traders to whom these places mostly belonged erected quadrangles of sun-dried brick with towers at the angles; their forts still appear in old books of travels: the War Department, however, has been sensible enough to remove them. ‘The position usually chosen is a river bottom, where fuel, grass, and water are readily procurable. The quarters are of various styles; some, with their low verandas, resemble Anglo-Indian bungalows or comfortable farm-houses; others are the storied houses, with the “stoop” or porch of the Eastern States in front; and low, long, peat-roofed tenements are used for magazines and out-houses. The best material is brown adobe or unburnt brick; others are of timber, whitewashed and clean-looking, with shingle roofs, glass windows, and gay green frames—that contrast of colors which the New Englander loves. The habitations surround a cleared central space for parade and drill; the ground is denoted by the tall flag-staff, which does not, as in English camps, distinguish the quarters of the commanding officer. One side is occupied by the officers’ bungalows, the other, generally that opposite, by the adjutant’s and quartermaster’s offices, and the square is completed by low ranges of barrack and commissariat stores, while various little shops, stables, corrals for cattle, a chapel, perhaps an artillery park, and surely an ice-house—in this point India is far behind the wilds of America—complete the settlement. Had these cantonments a few more trees and a far more brilliant verdure, they would suggest the idea of an out-station in Guzerat, the Deccan, or some similar Botany Bay for decayed gentlemen who transport themselves.
While at Washington I had resolved—as has already been intimated—when the reports of war in the West were waxing loud, to enjoy a little Indian fighting. The meritorious intention —for which the severest “wig,” concluding with something personally offensive about volunteering in general, would have been its sole result in the “fast-anchored isle’—was most courteously received by the Hon. John B. Floyd, Secretary of War, who provided me with introductory letters addressed to the officers commanding various “ departments”[2] “divisions,” as they would be called by Englishmen—in the West. The first tidings that saluted my ears on arrival at Fort Kearney acted as a quietus: an Indian action had been fought, which signified that there would be no more fighting for some time. Captain Sturgis, of the 1st Cavalry, U. S., had just attacked, near the Republican Fork of Kansas River, a little south of the fort, with six companies (about 350 men) and a few Delawares, a considerable body of the enemy, Comanches, Kiowas, and Cheyennes, who apparently had forgotten the severe lesson administered to them by Colonel—now Brigadier General—Edwin V. Sumner, 1st Cavalry, in 1857, and killed twenty-five with only two or three of his own men wounded. According to details gathered at Fort Kearney, the Indians had advanced under a black flag, lost courage, as wild men mostly will, when they heard the pas de charge, and, after making a running fight, being well mounted as well as armed, had carried off their “cripples” lashed to their horses. I had no time to call upon Captain Sully, who remained in command at Kearney with two troops (here called companies) of dragoons, or heavy cavalry, and one of infantry; the mail-wagon would halt there but a few minutes. I therefore hurriedly chose the alternative of advancing, with the hope of seeing “independent service” on the road. Intelligence of the fight had made even the conductor look grave; fifty or sixty miles Is a flea-bite to a mounted warparty, and disappointed Indians upon the war-path are especially dangerous—even the most friendly can not be trusted when they have lost, or have not succeeded in taking, a few scalps. We subsequently heard that they had crossed our path, but whether the tale was true or not is an essentially doubtful matter. If this chance failed, remained the excitement of the buffalo and the Mormon; both were likely to show better sport than could be found in riding wildly about the country after runaway braves.
We all prepared for the “gravity of the situation” by discharging and reloading our weapons, and.bade adieu, about 9 30 A.M., to Fort Kearney. Before dismissing the subject of forts, I am disposed to make some invidious remarks upon the army system of outposts in America.
The War Department of the United States has maintained the same system which the British, much to their loss—I need scarcely trouble the reader with a list of evils done to the soldier by outpost duty—adopted and pertinaciously kept up for so long a time in India; nay, even maintain to the present day, despite the imminent danger of mutiny. With the Anglo-Scandinavian race, the hate of centralization in civil policy extends to military organization, of which it should be the vital principle. The French, gifted with instinct for war, and being troubled with scant prejudice against concentration, civil as well as military, soon abandoned, when they found its futility, the idea of defending their Algerian frontier by extended lines, block-houses, and feeble intrenched posts. They wisely established, at the centres of action, depdts, magazines, and all the requisites for supporting large bodies of men, making them pivots for expeditionary columns, which by good military roads could be thrown in overwhelming numbers, in the best health and in the highest discipline, wherever an attack or an insurrectionary movement required crushing.
The necessity of so doing has long occurred to the American government, in whose service at present “a regiment is stationed to-day on the borders of tropical Mexico; to-morrow, the war-whoop, borne on a gale from the northwest, compels its presence to the frozen latitudes of Puget’s Sound.” The objections to. altering their present highly objectionable System are two: the first is a civil consideration, the second a military one.
As I have remarked about the centralization of troops, so it is with their relation to civilians; the Anglo-Scandinavian blood shows similar manifestations in the Old and in the New Country. The French, a purely military nation, pet their army, raise it to the highest pitch, send it in for glory, and when it fails are to its faults a little blind. The English and Anglo-Americans, essentially a commercial and naval people, dislike the red coat; they look upon, and from the first they looked upon, a standing army as a necessary nuisance; they ever listen open-eared to projects for cutting and curtailing army expenditure: and when they have weakened their forces by a manner of atrophy, they expect them to do more than their duty, and if they can not command success, abuse them. With a commissariat, transport, and hospitals—delicate pieces of machinery, which can not run smoothly when roughly and hurriedly put together—unaccustomed to and unprepared for service, they land an army 8000 miles from home, and then make the world ring with their disappointment, and their complainings anent fearful losses in men and money. ‘The fact is that, though no soldiers in the world fight with more bravery and determination, the Anglo-Scandinavian race, with their present institutions, are inferior to their inferiors in other points, as regards the art of military organization. Their fatal wants are order and economy, combined with the will and the means of selecting the best men—these belong to the emperor, not to the constitutional king or the president—and most of all, the habit of implicit subjection to the commands of an absolute dictator. The end of this long preamble is that the American government apparently thinks less of the efficiency of its troops than of using them as escorts to squatters, as police of the highway. Withal they fail; emigrants will not be escorted; women and children will struggle when they please, even in an Indian country, and every season has its dreadful tales of violence and starvation, massacre and cannibalism. In France the emigrants would be ordered to collect in bodies at certain seasons, to report their readiness for the road to the officers commanding stations, to recelve an escort, as he should deem proper, and to disobey at their peril.
The other motive of the American outpost system is military, but also of civilian origin. Concentration would necessarily be unpalatable to a number of senior officers, who now draw what in England would be called command allowances at the several stations [3] One of the principles of a republic is to pay a man only while he works; pensions, like sinecures, are left to governments less disinterested. The American army—it would hardly be believed—has no pensions, sale of commissions, off-reckonings, nor retiring list. A man hopelessly invalided, or in his second childhood, must hang on by means of furloughs ‘and medical certificates to the end. The colonels are mostly upon the sick-list—one died lately aged ninety-three, and dating from the days of Louis XVI. —and T heard of an officer who, though practicing medicine for years, was still retained upon the cadre of his regiment. Of course, the necessity of changing such an anomaly has frequently been mooted by the Legislature; the scandalous failure, however, of an attempt at introducing a pension-list into the United States Navy so shocked the public that no one will hear of the experiment being renewed, even in corpore vili, the army.
To conclude the subject of outpost system. If the change be advisable in the United States, it is positively necessary to the British in India. ‘The peninsula presents three main points, not to mention the detached heights that are found in every province, as the great pivots of action, the Himalayas, the Deccan, and the Nilgherry Hills, where, until wanted, the Sepoy and his officer, as well as the white soldier—the latter worth £100 a head—can be kept in health, drilled, disciplined, and taught the hundred arts which render an “ old salt” the most handy of men. A few years ago the English soldier was fond of Indian service; hardly a regiment returned home without leaving hundreds behind it: Now, long, fatiguing marches, scant fare, the worst accommodation, and the various results of similar: hardships, make him look upon the land as a Golgotha; it is with difficulty that he can be prevented from showing his disgust. Both in India and America, this will be the great benefit of extensive railroads: they will do away with single stations, and enable the authorities to carry out a system of concentration most beneficial to the country and to the service, which, after many years of sore drudgery, may at last discern the good time coming.
In the United States, two other measures appear called for by circumstances. ‘The Indian race is becoming desperate, wild-beast like, hemmed in by its enemies that have flanked it on the east and west, and are gradually closing in upon it. The tribes can no longer shift ground without inroads into territories already occupied by neighbors, who are, of course, hostile; they are, therefore, being brought to final bay.
The first is a camel corps. -At present, when disturbances on a large scale occur in the far West—the spring of 1862 will probably see them—a force of cavalry must be sent from the East, perhaps also infantry. “The horses, after a march of 500 or 600 miles, are expected to act with success”—I quote the sensible remarks of a “late captain of infantry” (Captain Patterson, U.S. Army)—“against scattered bands of mounted hunters, with the speed of a horse and the watchfulness of a wolf or antelope, whose faculties are sharpened by their necessities; who, when they get short of provisions, separate and look for something to eat, and find it in the water, in the ground, or on the surface; whose bill of fare ranges from grass-seed, nuts, roots, grasshoppers, lizards, and rattlesnakes, up to the antelope, deer, elk, bear, and buffalo, and who, having a continent to roam over, will neither be surprised, caught, conquered, overawed, or reduced to famine by a rumbling, bugle-blowing, drum-beating town passing through their country on wheels, at the speed of a loaded wagon.” But the camel would in these latitudes easily march sixty miles per diem for a week or ten days, amply sufficient to tire out the sturdiest Indian pony; it requires water only after every fifty hours, and the worst soil would supply it with ample forage in the shape of wild sage, rabbit-bush, and thorns. Each animal would carry two men, with their arms and ammunition, rations for the time required, bedding and regimental necessaries, with material to make up a tente d’abri if judged necessary. The organization should be that of the Sindh Camel Corps, which, under Sir Charles Napier, was found so efficient against the frontier Beloch. The best men for this kind of fighting would be the Mountaineers, or Western Men, of the caste called “Pikes;” properly speaking, Missourians, but popularly any “rough” between St. Louis and California. After a sound flogging, for the purpose of preparing their minds to admit the fact that all men are not equal, they might be used by sea or land, whenever hard, downright fighting is required. It is understood that hitherto the camel, despite the careful selection by Mr. De Leon, the excellent Consul General of the United States in Egypt, and the valuable instructions of Hekekyan Bey, has proved a failure in the Western world. If so, want of patience has been the sole cause; the animal must be acclimatized by slow degrees before heavy loading to test its powers of strength and speed. Some may deem this amount of delay impossible. I confess my belief that the Anglo-Americans can, within any but the extremest limits, accomplish any thing they please—except unity.
The other necessity will be the raising of native regiments. The French in Africa have their Spahis, the Russians their Cossacks, and the English their Sepoys. The American government has often been compelled, as in the case of the Creek battalion, which did good service during the Seminole campaign, indirectly to use their wild aborigines; but the public sentiment, or rather prejudice, which fathers upon the modern Pawnee the burning and torturing tastes of the ancient Mohawk, is strongly opposed to pitting Indian against Indian in battle. Surely this is a false as well as a mistaken philanthropy. If war must be, it is better that Indian instead of white blood should be shed. And invariably the effect of enlisting savages and barbarians, subjecting them to discipline, and placing them directly under the eye of the civilized man, has been found to diminish their ferocity. The Bashi Buzuk, left to himself, roasted the unhappy Russian; in the British service he brought his prisoner alive into camp with a view to a present or promotion. When talking over the subject with the officers of the United States regular army, they have invariably concurred with me in the possibility of the scheme, provided that the public animus could be turned pro instead of con; and I have no doubt but that they will prove as leaders of Irregulars—it would be invidious to quote names—equal to the best of the Anglo-Indians, Skinner, Beatson, and Jacob. The men would receive about ten dollars per man, and each corps number 800. They would be better mounted and better armed than their wild brethren, and they might be kept, when not required for active service, in a buffalo country, their favorite quarters, and their finest field for soldierlike exercises. The main point to be avoided is the mistake committed by the British in India, that of appointing too many officers to their Sepoy corps.
We left Kearney at 9 30 A.M., following the road which runs forty miles up the valley of the Platte. It is a broad prairie, plentifully supplied with water in wells two to four feet deep; the fluid is cool and clear, but it is said not to be wholesome. Where the soil is clayey pools abound; the sandy portions are of course dry. Along the southern bank near Kearney are few elevations; on the opposite or northern side appear high and wooded bluffs. The road was rough with pitch-holes, and for the first time I remarked a peculiar gap in the ground like an East Indian sun-crack—in these latitudes you see none of the deep fissures which scar the face of mother earth in tropical lands—the effect of rain-streams and snow-water acting upon the clay. Each succeeding winter lengthens the head and deepens the sole of this deeply-gashed water-cut till it destroys the road. A curious mirage appeared, doubling to four the strata of river and vegetation on the banks. The sight.and song of birds once more charmed us after a desert where animal life is as rare as upon the plains of Brazil. After fifteen miles of tossing and tumbling, we made “Seventeen-mile Station,” and halted there to change mules. About twenty miles above the fort the southern bank began to rise into mounds of tenacious clay, which, worn away into perpendicular and precipitous sections, composes the columnar formation called O’Fallon’s Bluffs. At 1 15 P.M. we reached Plum Creek, after being obliged to leave behind one of the conductors, who had become delirious with the “shakes.” The establishment, though new, was already divided into three; the little landlady, though she worked so manfully, was, as she expressed it, “enjoying bad health;” in other words, suffering from a “dumb chill.” I may observe that the Prairie Traveler’s opinions concerning the power of encamping with impunity upon the banks of the streams in this country must not be applied to the Platte. The whole line becomes with early autumn a hotbed of febrile disease. And generally throughout this season the stranger should not consider himself safe on any grounds save those defended from the southern trade-wind, which, sweeping directly from the Gulf of Mexico, bears with it noxious exhalations.
About Plum Ranch the soil is rich, clayey, and dotted with swamps and “slews,” by which the English traveler will understand sloughs. The dryer portions were a Gulistan of bright red, blue, and white flowers, the purple aster, and the mallow, with its parsnip-like root, eaten by the Indians, the gaudy yellow helianthus—we remarked at least three varieties—the snowy mimulus, the graceful flax, sometimes four feet high, and a delicate little euphorbia, while in the damper ground appeared.the polar plant, that prairie compass, the plane of whose leaf ever turns toward the magnetic meridian. This is the “weed-prairie,” one of the many divisions of the great natural meadows; grass prairie, rolling prairie, motte prairie, salt prairie, and soda prairie. It deserves a more poetical name, for
“These are the gardens of the desert, these
The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful,
For which the speech of England has no name.”
Buffalo herds were behind the hills, but we were too full of sleep to follow them. The plain was dotted with blanched skulls and bones, which would have made a splendid bonfire. Apparently the expert voyageur has not learned that they form good fuel; at any rate, he has preferred to them the “chips” of which it 1s said that a steak cooked with them requires no pepper.[4]
We dined at Plum Creek on buffalo, probably bull beef, the worst and dryest meat, save elk, that I have ever tasted; indeed, without the assistance of pork fat, we found it hard to swallow. As every one knows, however, the two-year old cow is the best eating, and at this season the herds are ever in the worst condition. The animals calve in May and June, consequently they are in August completely out of flesh. They are fattest about Christmas, when they find it difficult to run. All agree in declaring that there is no better meat than that of the young buffalo: the assertion, however, must be taken cum grano salis. Wild flesh was never known to be equal to tame, and that monarch did at least one wise thing who made the loin of beef Sir Loin. The voyageurs and travelers who cry up the buffalo as so delicious, have been living for weeks on rusty bacon and lean antelope; a rich hump with its proper menstruum, a cup of café noir as strong as possible, must truly be a “tit-bit.” They boast that the fat does not disagree with the eater; neither do three pounds of heavy pork with the English plow-boy, who has probably taken less exercise than the Canadian hunter. Before long, buffalo flesh will reach New York, where I predict it will be held as inferior to butcher’s meat as is the antelope to park-fed venison. While hunting, Indians cut off the tail to test the quality of the game, and they have acquired by habit a power of judging on the run between fat and lean.
Resuming our weary ride, we watered at “Willow Island Ranch,” and then at “Cold Water Ranch” —drinking-shops all —five miles from Midway Station, which we reached at 8 P.M. Here, while changing mules, we attempted with sweet speech and smiles to persuade the landlady, who showed symptoms of approaching maternity, into giving us supper. This she sturdily refused to do, for the reason that she had not received due warning. We had, however, the satisfaction of seeing the employés of the line making themselves thoroughly comfortable with bread and buttermilk. Into the horrid wagon again, and “a rollin:” lazily enough the cold and hungry night passed on.[5]
[1] For an accurate geographical description of this little-known river, the reader is referred to Lieutenant Warren’s report, published by the Secretary of War, United States.
[2] The following is a list of the military departments into which the United States are divided:
MILITARY COMMANDS.
Department of the East.—The country east of the Mississippi River; head-quarters at Troy, N. Y. |
Department of the West.—The country west of the Mississippi River, and east of the Rocky Mountains, except that portion included within the limits of the departments of Texas and New Mexico; head-quarters at St. Louis, Mo.
Department of Texas.--The State of Texas, and the territory north of it to the boundaries of New Mexico, Kansas, and Arkansas, and the Arkansas River, including Fort Smith. Fort Bliss, in Texas, is temporarily attached to the department of New Mexico; head-quarters at San Antonio, Texas.
Depariment of New Mexico.—The Territory of New Mexico; head-quarters at Santa Fé, New Mexico.
Department of Utah.—The Territory of Utah, except that portion of it lying west of the 117th degree of west longitude; head-quarters, Camp Floyd, U. T.
Department of the Pacific—The country west of the Rocky Mountains, except those portions of it included within the limits of the departments of Utah and New Mexico, and the district of Oregon ; head-quarters at San Francisco, California.
District of Oregon.—The Territory of Washington and the State of Oregon, excepting the Rogue River and Umpqua districts in Oregon; head-quarters at Fort Vancouver, Washington Territory.
[3] The aggregate of the little regular army of the United States in 1860 amounted
to 18,093. It was dispersed into eighty military posts, viz., thirteen in the Depart-
ment of the East, nine in the West, twenty in Texas, twelve in the Department of
Mew Mexico, two in Utah (Fort Bridger and Camp Floyd), eleven in Oregon, and
thirteen in the Department of California. They each would have an average of
about 225 men.
[4] The chip corresponds with the bois de vache of Switzerland, the tezek of Armenia, the arghol of Thibet, and the gobar of India. With all its faults, it is at least superior to that used in Sindh.
[5] According to Colonel Frémont, the total amount of buffalo robes purchased by the several companies, American, Hudson’s Bay, and others, was an annual total of 90,000 from the eight or ten years preceding 1843. ‘This is repeated by the Abbé Domenech, who adds that the number does not include those slaughtered in the southern regions by the Comanches and other tribes of the Texan frontier, nor those killed between March and November, when the skins are unfit for tanning. In 1847, the town of St. Louis received 110,000 buffalo robes, stags’, deer, and other skins, and twenty-five salted tongues.