Trails of the Pathfinders by George Bird Grinnell

Author:George Bird Grinnell [Grinnell, George Bird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: anboco
Published: 2017-01-04T23:00:00+00:00

BUFFALO ON THE SOUTHERN PLAINS.

From Kendall’s Narrative of the Texas Santa Fé Expedition.

As they proceeded westward they found the prairie covered with buffalo, most of them cows and calves. Pike dilates on their numbers, and speaks of the excellence of the flesh of the buffalo, which he says was “equal to any meat I ever saw, and we feasted sumptuously on the choice morsels.” From time to time they came upon the trail of the Spaniards, returning to their mountain homes, and counted the fires about which these people had encamped. Now their horses were beginning to grow poor and weak, owing to the scanty pasturage; and now, too, November 12, Pike passed beyond the borders of the present Kansas and into what is now the State of Colorado.

On November 15, “at 2 o’clock in the afternoon I thought I could distinguish a mountain to our right, which appeared like a small blue cloud; viewed it with the spy-glass, and was still more confirmed in my conjecture, yet only communicated it to Dr. Robinson, who was in front with me; but in half an hour they appeared in full view before us. When our small party arrived on the hill they with one accord gave three cheers to the Mexican mountains. Their appearance can easily be imagined by those who have crossed the Alleghanies; but their sides were whiter, as if covered with snow, or a white stone. Those were a spur of the grand western chain of mountains which divide the waters of the Pacific from those of the Atlantic Ocean; and the spur divides the waters which empty into the Bay of the Holy Spirit from those of the Mississippi, as the Alleghanies do those which discharge themselves into the latter river and the Atlantic. They appear to present a natural boundary between the province of Louisiana and New Mexico, and would be a defined and natural boundary.” On the same day they came to the Purgatory River, or River of Souls. Here the Arkansas appeared to carry much more water than below, and was apparently navigable.

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