his section supplies can be had at reasonable rates.

At Victoria and San Antonio many fine stores will be found, well
supplied with large stocks of goods, embracing all the articles the
traveler will require.

The next route to the north is that over which the semi-weekly mail to
California passes, and which, for a great portion of the way to New
Mexico, I traveled and recommended in 1849. This road leaves the
Arkansas River at Fort Smith, to which point steamers run during the
seasons of high water in the winter and spring.

Supplies of all descriptions necessary for the overland journey may be
procured at Fort Smith, or at Van Buren on the opposite side of the
Arkansas. Horses and cattle are cheap here. The road, on leaving Fort
Smith, passes through the Choctaw and Chickasaw country for 180 miles,
then crosses Red River by ferry-boat at Preston, and runs through the
border settlements of northern Texas for 150 miles, within which
distances supplies may be procured at moderate prices.

This road is accessible to persons desiring to make the entire journey
with their own transportation from Tennessee or Mississippi, by
crossing the Mississippi River at Memphis or Helena, passing Little
Rock, and thence through Washington County, intersecting the road at
Preston. It may also be reached by taking steamers up Red River to
Shreveport or Jefferson, from either of which places there are roads
running through a populated country, and intersecting the Fort Smith
road near Preston.

This road also unites with the San Antonio road at El Paso, and from
that point they pass together over the mountains to Fort Yuma and to
San Francisco in California.

Another road leaves Fort Smith and runs up the south side of the
Canadian River to Santa Fe and Albuquerque in New Mexico.

This route is set down upon most of the maps of the present day as
having been discovered and explored by various persons, but my own name
seems to have been carefully excluded from the list. Whether this
omission has been intentional or not, I leave for the authors to
determine. I shall merely remark that I had the command and entire
direction of an expedition which in 1849 discovered, explored, located,
and marked out this identical wagon road from Fort Smith, Arkansas, to
Santa Fe, New Mexico, and that this road, for the greater portion of
the distance, is the same that has been since recommended for a Pacific
railway.

This road, near Albuquerque,