Page:Historic highways of America (Volume 12).djvu/206

 it, that I was obliged to dismount and trace it out on foot. It wound about with a hundred serpentine evolutions to avoid the heavy swamps and marshes around us; and I repeatedly thought that, if we lost it, we never should extricate our baggage: even with its assistance, we were obliged frequently to halt and replace the packs, which were violently forced off by the branches with which they constantly came in contact 'where on earth is he taking us now?—why we are going back in the same direction as we came!' I turned round and asked the speaker (a comrade)  to point with his finger to the quarter which he would make for if he were guiding the party to Fort Leavenworth. He did so; and I took out my compass and showed him that he was pointing south-west, i.e. to Santa Fé and the Gulf of California: so completely had the poor fellow's head become puzzled by the winding circuit we had made in the swamp."