" by which it is generally known in New Mexico, is this:
When Spain owned all Mexico and Florida, as the vast region of the
Mississippi valley was called, long before the United States had an
existence as a separate government, the commanding officer at Santa Fe
received an order to open communication with the country of Florida. For
this purpose an infantry regiment was selected. It left Santa Fe rather
late in the season, and wintered at a point on the Old Trail now known
as Trinidad. In the spring, the colonel, leaving all camp-followers
behind him, both men and women, marched down the stream, which flows
for many miles through a magnificent canyon. Not one of the regiment
returned or was ever heard of. When all hope had departed from the
wives, children, and friends left behind at Trinidad, information was
sent to Santa Fe, and a wail went up through the land. The priests and
people then called this stream "El Rio de las Animas Perditas" ("The
river of lost souls"). Years after, when the Spanish power was weakened,
and French trappers came into the country under the auspices of the
great fur companies, they adopted a more concise name; they called
the river "Le Purgatoire." Then came the Great American Bull-Whacker.
Utterly unable to twist his tongue into any such Frenchified expression,
he called the stream with its sad story "Picketwire," and by that name
it is known to all frontiersmen, trappers, and the settlers along its
banks.]

[Footnote 59: The ranch is now in charge of Mr. Harry Whigham, an English
gentleman, who keeps up the old hospitality of the famous place.]

[Footnote 60: "River of Souls." The stream is also called Le Purgatoire,
corrupted by the Americans into Picketwire.]

[Footnote 61: Pawnee Rock is no longer conspicuous. Its material has been torn
away by both the railroad and the settlers in the vicinity, to
build foundations for water-tanks, in the one instance, and for the
construction of their houses, barns, and sheds, in the other. Nothing
remains of the once famous landmark; its site is occupied as a cattle
corral by the owner of the claim in which it is included.]

[Footnote 62: The crossing of the Old Santa Fe Trail at Pawnee Fork is now
within the corporate limits of the pretty little town of Larned, the
county-seat of Pawnee County. The tourist from his car-window may look
right down upon one of the worst places for Indians that there was in
those days of the commerce of the prai