d, forty-seven miles west of Hutchinson, though it runs
nearly parallel to the once great highway at varying distances for the
whole detour.

The ruins of the once important military post may be seen from the
car-windows on the right, as the train crosses the iron bridge spanning
the Walnut, and here the Old Trail exactly coincides with the railroad,
the track of the latter running immediately on the old highway.

Three miles westward from the classic little Walnut the Old Trail ran
through what is now the Court House Square of the town of Great Bend;
it may be seen from the station, and on that very spot occurred the
terrible fight of Captains Booth and Hallowell in 1864.

Thirteen miles further mountainward, on the right of the railroad, not
far from the track, stands all that remains of the once dreaded Pawnee
Rock. It lies just beyond the limits of the little hamlet bearing its
name. It would not be recognized by any of the old plainsmen were they
to come out of their isolated graves; for it is only a disintegrated,
low mass of sandstone now, utilized for the base purposes of a corral,
in which the village herd of milch cows lie down at night and chew
their cuds, such peaceful transformation has that great civilizer, the
locomotive, wrought in less than two decades.

Another five or six miles, and the train crosses Ash Creek, which, too,
was once one of the favourite haunts of the Pawnee and Comanche on their
predatory excursions, in the days when the mules and horses of passing
freight caravans excited their cupidity. A short whirl again, and the
town of Larned, lying peacefully on the Arkansas and Pawnee Fork, is
reached. Immediately opposite the centre of the street through which the
railroad runs, and which was also the course of the Old Trail, lying
in the Arkansas River, close to its northern bank, is a small
thickly-wooded island, now reached by a bridge, that is famous as the
battle-ground of a terrible conflict thirty years ago, between the
Pawnees and Cheyennes, hereditary enemies, in which the latter tribe was
cruelly defeated.

The railroad bridge crosses Pawnee Fork at the precise spot where the
Old Trail did. This locality has been the scene of some of the bloodiest
encounters between the various tribes of savages themselves, and between
them and the freight caravans, the overland coaches, and every other
kind of outfit that formerly attempted the passage of the now peaceful
stream. In fact, the w