Page:Lost with Lieutenant Pike (1919).djvu/245

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the Arkansaw, to find the Red River down in the region of the Great White Mountains.

The first day they marched thirteen miles; the doctor killed a deer. The second day they marched nineteen miles, up along a stream that opened a way for them to the mountains; the lieutenant and the doctor and John Sparks each killed a deer. On the third day they marched up the same stream, eighteen miles, in a snowstorm; and nobody killed anything. So to-night they pretty well finished their meat. Travelling afoot in winter was hungry work, and they could carry only a little at a time.

On the fourth day they marched twenty-eight miles—and a bad day it proved to be. The Great White Mountains had been getting nearer, at this end—their upper end. They formed a tremendous snowy chain stretching northwest and southeast. The stream came down from them, and they were about to bar the trail. Upon the east there were lesser mountains. But no Red River flowed in this broad trough between the two ranges; its streams fed the Arkansaw River; therefore the Red River must lie upon the farther, or western side, of the Great White range.[1]

  1. These Great White Mountains of Lieutenant Pike are the Sangre de Cristo Range of Southern Colorado. They extend from the Arkansas River above the Grand Canyon clear