Pike's whole line of conduct shows him to have been of the most
patriotic character; never would he for a moment have countenanced a
proposition from Aaron Burr!

After Captain Pike's report had been published to the world, the
adventurers who were inspired by its glowing description of the country
he had been so far to explore were destined to experience trials and
disappointments of which they had formed no conception.

Among them was a certain Captain Sublette, a famous old trapper in
the era of the great fur companies, and with him a Captain Smith, who,
although veteran pioneers of the Rocky Mountains, were mere novices in
the many complications of the Trail; but having been in the fastnesses
of the great divide of the continent, they thought that when they got
down on the plains they could go anywhere. They started with twenty
wagons, and left the Missouri without a single one of the party being
competent to guide the little caravan on the dangerous route.

From the Missouri the Trail was broad and plain enough for a child to
follow, but when they arrived at the Cimarron crossing of the Arkansas,
not a trace of former caravans was visible; nothing but the innumerable
buffalo-trails leading from everywhere to the river.

When the party entered the desert, or Dry Route, as it was years
afterward always, and very properly, called in certain seasons of
drought, the brave but too confident men discovered that the whole
region was burnt up. They wandered on for several days, the horrors of
death by thirst constantly confronting them. Water must be had or they
would all perish! At last Smith, in his desperation, determined to
follow one of the numerous buffalo-trails, believing that it would
conduct him to water of some character--a lake or pool or even wallow.
He left the train alone; asked for no one to accompany him; for he was
the very impersonation of courage, one of the most fearless men that
ever trapped in the mountains.

He walked on and on for miles, when, on ascending a little divide, he
saw a stream in the valley beneath him. It was the Cimarron, and he
hurried toward it to quench his intolerable thirst. When he arrived at
its bank, to his disappointment it was nothing but a bed of sand; the
sometime clear running river was perfectly dry.

Only for a moment was he staggered; he knew the character of many
streams in the West; that often their waters run under the ground at
a short distance from the surfa