reeks were famous for beaver, otter, and mink.

Scarcely an acre of the surrounding area within the radius of hundreds
of miles but has been the scene of many deadly encounters with the
wily red man, stories of which are still current among the few old
mountaineers yet living.

The fort was six hundred and fifty miles west of Fort Leavenworth, in
latitude thirty-eight degrees and two minutes north, and longitude one
hundred and three degrees and three minutes west, from Greenwich. The
exterior walls of the fort, whose figure was that of a parallelogram,
were fifteen feet high and four feet thick. It was a hundred and
thirty-five feet wide and divided into various compartments. On the
northwest and southeast corners were hexagonal bastions, in which were
mounted a number of cannon. The walls of the building served as the
walls of the rooms, all of which faced inwards on a plaza, after the
general style of Mexican architecture. The roofs of the rooms were made
of poles, on which was a heavy layer of dirt, as in the houses of native
Mexicans to-day. The fort possessed a billiard table, that visitors
might amuse themselves, and in the office was a small telescope with a
fair range of seven miles.

The occupants of the far-away establishment, in its palmy days (for
years it was the only building between Council Grove and the mountains),
were traders, Indians, hunters, and French trappers, who were the
employees of the great fur companies. Many of the latter had Indian
wives. Later, after a stage line had been put in operation across the
plains to Santa Fe, the fort was relegated to a mere station for
the overland route, and with the march of civilization in its course
westward, the trappers, hunters, and traders vanished from the once
famous rendezvous.

The walls were loopholed for musketry, and the entrance to the plaza, or
corral, was guarded by large wooden gates. During the war with Mexico,
the fort was headquarters for the commissary department, and many
supplies were stored there, though the troops camped below on the
beautiful river-bottom. In the centre of the corral, in the early days
when the place was a rendezvous of the trappers, a large buffalo-robe
press was erected. When the writer first saw the famous fort, now over a
third of a century ago, one of the cannon, that burst in firing a salute
to General Kearney, could be seen half buried in the dirt of the plaza.

By barometrical measurements taken by the