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 districts occupied by the Arapaho and Cheyenne Indians, the former of whom at first appeared disposed to dispute the passage of the white men.

One encounter, which threatened to be serious, took place on the 8th July. The excitement of watching a fight between some eighteen or twenty buffaloes, which the explorers had at the last moment decided in favor of the weaker party by a few well-directed shots, had but just subsided, when some dark objects appeared on the horizon among the hills. More buffaloes, of course, thought every one; but, presently, Maxwell, a trader who knew the neighborhood and its people well, happened to look behind him, and saw crowds of mounted natives furiously urging on their horses.

At first there seemed to be no more than twenty warriors, but behind them came others, and soon the hills and plains were darkened by the dusky figures. The explorers halted, drew together, and determined to sell their lives as dearly as they could, prepared to meet the onslaught with a volley of bullets. Another moment, and many of the Indians would have been rolling in the dust, when Maxwell suddenly recognized their leader as a man with whom he had often traded. "Don't you know me?" he shouted in the Arapaho language; and, astonished at the sound of his own tongue, the chief wheeled his horse round. Then, dashing forward, he extended his hand to Fremont with the one word "Arapaho," meaning that, as a member of that nation, he was the friend of Maxwell's friend.

Escorted by the now courteous savages, the expedition pressed on, and, without further adventures of consequence, followed the south fork of the Platte to St. Vram's Fort, a trading outpost, situated just under the most easterly buttresses of the Rocky Mountain Range, about seventeen miles from Long's Peak. Pike's Peak could also be seen about one hundred miles to the south, and but little of actual exploration remained to be done in the immediate neighborhood. Fremont resolved, therefore, to alter his course, and follow the north fork of the Platte to Fort Laramie, a second remote outpost in the wilderness, whence he hoped to make his way to the head of the Sweet Water River, an affluent of the Nebraska issuing from the South Pass of the Rocky Mountains.

Crossing the fertile, garden-like valley of the Platte, with the low line of the frowning Black Hills on the left, the expedition reached Fort Laramie in safety on the 13th July, and were there detained a few days on account of difficulties between the white settlers and the Gros-Ventre, Cheyenne,