at ravine; they jumped into it
in their efforts to escape from the hunters, and so terrible was the
slaughter as they tumbled over the precipice that the depression was
completely filled up, their carcasses forming a bridge, over which the
remainder passed with ease.

The next recorded expedition across the plains via the Old Trail was
also by the Spaniards from Santa Fe, eastwardly, in the year 1716, "for
the purpose of establishing a Military Post in the Upper Mississippi
Valley as a barrier to the further encroachments of the French in
that direction." An account of this expedition is found in _Memoires
Historiques sur La Louisiane_, published in Paris in 1858, but never
translated in its entirety. The author, Lieutenant Dumont of the French
army, was one of a party ascending the Arkansas River in search of a
supposed mass of emeralds. The narrative relates:

There was more than half a league to traverse to gain the
other bank of the river, and our people were no sooner
arrived than they found there a party of Missouris, sent to
M. de la Harpe by M. de Bienville, then commandant general
at Louisiana, to deliver orders to the former. Consequently
they gave the signal order, and our other two canoes having
crossed the river, the savages gave to our commandant the
letters of M. de Bienville, in which he informed him that
the Spaniards had sent out a detachment from New Mexico
to go to the Missouris and to establish a post in that
country.... The success of this expedition was very
calamitous to the Spaniards. Their caravan was composed of
fifteen hundred people, men, women and soldiers, having
with them a Jacobin for a chaplain, and bringing also a
great number of horses and cattle, according to the custom
of that nation to forget nothing that might be necessary for
a settlement. Their design was to destroy the Missouris,
and to seize upon their country, and with this intention
they had resolved to go first to the Osages, a neighbouring
nation, enemies of the Missouris, to form an alliance with
them, and to engage them in their behalf for the execution
of their plan. Perhaps the map which guided them was not
correct, or they had not exactly followed it, for it chanced
that inst