The Exploring Expedition to the Rocky Mountains, Oregon and California | Page 7

by
timbered hollows, and occupying an area of several hundred feet, so
that necessarily the guards were far apart; and now and then I could
hear Randolph, as if relieved by the sound of a voice in the darkness,
calling out to the sergeant of the guard, to direct his attention to some
imaginary alarm; but they stood it out, and took their turn regularly
afterwards.
The next morning we had a specimen of the false alarms to which all
parties in these wild regions are subject. Proceeding up the valley,
objects were seen on the opposite hills, which disappeared before a
glass could be brought to bear upon them. A man who was a short
distance in the rear, came springing up in great haste, shouting "Indians!
Indians!" He had been near enough to see and count them, according to
his report, and had made out twenty-seven. I immediately halted; arms
were examined and put in order; the usual preparations made; and Kit
Carson, springing upon one of the hunting horses, crossed the river, and
galloped off into the opposite prairies, to obtain some certain
intelligence of their movements.

Mounted on a fine horse, without a saddle, and scouring bare-headed
over the prairies, Kit was one of the finest pictures of a horseman I
have ever seen. A short time enabled him to discover that the Indian
war-party of twenty-seven consisted of six elk, who had been gazing
curiously at our caravan as it passed by, and were now scampering off
at full speed. This was our first alarm, and its excitement broke
agreeably on the monotony of the day. At our noon halt, the men were
exercised at a target; and in the evening we pitched our tents at a
Pawnee encampment of last July. They had apparently killed buffalo
here, as many bones were lying about, and the frames where the hides
had been stretched were yet standing. The road of the day had kept the
valley, which is sometimes rich and well timbered, though the country
generally is sandy. Mingled with the usual plants, a thistle (_carduus
leucographus_) had for the last day or two made its appearance; and
along the river bottom, tradescantia (virginica) and milk plant
(_asclepias syriaca_) [Footnote: This plant is very odoriferous, and in
Canada charms the traveler, especially when passing through woods in
the evening. The French there eat the tender shoots in the spring, as we
do asparagus. The natives make a sugar of the flowers, gathering them
in the morning when they are covered with dew, and collect the cotton
from their pods to fill their beds. On account of the silkiness of this
cotton, Parkinson calls the plant Virginian silk.--_Loudon's
Encyclopædia of Plants_.
The Sioux Indians of the Upper Platte eat the young pods of this plant,
boiling them with the meat of the buffalo.] in considerable quantities.
Our march to-day had been twenty-one miles, and the astronomical
observations gave us a chronometric longitude of 98° 22' 12", and
latitude 40° 26' 50". We were moving forward at seven in the morning,
and in about five miles reached a fork of the Blue, where the road
leaves that river, and crosses over to the Platte. No water was to be
found on the dividing ridge, and the casks were filled, and the animals
here allowed a short repose. The road led across a high and level prairie
ridge, where were but few plants, and those principally thistle, (carduus
leucographus,) and a kind of dwarf artemisia. Antelope were seen
frequently during the morning, which was very stormy. Squalls of rain,
with thunder and lightning, were around us in every direction; and
while we were enveloped in one of them, a flash, which seemed to

scorch our eyes as it passed, struck in the prairie within a few hundred
feet, sending up a column of dust.
Crossing on the way several Pawnee roads to the Arkansas, we reached,
in about twenty-one miles from our halt on the Blue, what is called the
coast of the Nebraska, or Platte river. This had seemed in the distance a
range of high and broken hills; but on a nearer approach was found to
be elevations of forty to sixty feet into which the wind had worked the
sand. They were covered with the usual fine grasses of the country, and
bordered the eastern side of the ridge on a breadth of about two miles.
Change of soil and country appeared here to have produced some
change in the vegetation. Cacti were numerous, and all the plants of the
region appeared to flourish among the warm hills. Among them the
amorpha, in full bloom, was remarkable for its large and luxuriant
purple clusters. From the foot of the coast, a distance of two miles
across the