Page:Columbus and other heroes of American discovery; (IA columbusotherher00bell).pdf/254

 tributaries, should now be sought; and, with this end in view, a south-*westerly course was pursued along the eastern base of the Rocky Mountain Chain. A weary march across the low, bare, sandy plains of the present state of Wyoming, strewn with broken sandstone, brought our heroes to the brink of the precipice dividing these lofty table-lands from the valley of the Arkansas, where they were alike cheered and tantalized by the sight of the river they were seeking, flowing through a rich and fertile country.

It was now decided to divide forces; Captain Long and most of the men, with all the heavy baggage, to go down the Arkansas to the Mississippi and await the rest of the party at Fort Smith, while Captain James and a few picked men should continue the explorations among the mountains. The first part of the programme was duly carried out, the chief discovery made being the existence of a number of chalybeate springs; but much disappointment and delay attended Captain James and his party in their wanderings among the then unknown tracts inhabited by the Yutas and other wild tribes bordering on the Salt Lake territory, a region about which a weird mystery clings even now.

Provisions and water alike ran short; the beds of streams, to which the travelers hastened to quench their thirst, turned out to be full of nothing but salt, and all efforts to find the source of the Arkansas failed. At last a broad tributary, supposed to be the Red River of the South, was discovered and followed, but it turned out to be the Canadian, which joins the Arkansas before the confluence of the latter with the Mississippi. The second half of the journey of exploration may therefore be said to have practically failed, though the way was paved by it for the colonists who, a few years later, migrated to the districts traversed.

The whole party met again at Fort Smith on the Mississippi, and made their way thence to the western coast by what had now become quite a well-known track. Disgusted with the poor results obtained, however, Major Long shortly afterward accepted the command of yet another expedition, the aim of which was to explore the vast tracts watered by the northern tributaries of the Mississippi, and which, though the property of the United States, were as yet practically unknown.

The explorers this time started from a village on the Ohio, from which they made their way across the province of the same name and part of Indiana to Lake Michigan, witnessing in their wanderings many terrible scenes of cruelty. The Potawatomies, inhabiting the high table-lands of this