they were going from such to such a
degree of longitude. They reached the Arkansas river, but from thence to
the Cimaron there is no road, except the numerous paths of the
buffaloes, which, intersecting the prairie, very often deceive the
travellers.

When the caravan entered this desert the earth was entirely dry, and the
pioneers mistaking their road, wandered during several days exposed to
all the horrors of a febrile thirst under a burning sun. Often they were
seduced by the deceitful appearance of a buffalo-path, and in this
perilous situation Captain Smith, one of the owners of the caravan,
resolved to follow one of these paths, which he considered would
indubitably lead him to some spring of water or to a marsh.

He was alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined
adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and if but half of
what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth
escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the
best pages of the American novelist. Poor man! after having during so
many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was
fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his bones to bleach upon the
desert sands.

He was about twelve miles from his comrades, when, turning round a small
hill, he perceived the long-sought object of his wishes. A small stream
glided smoothly in the middle of the prairie before him. It was the
river Cimaron. He hurried forward to moisten his parched lips, but just
as he was stooping over the water he fell, pierced by ten arrows. A band
of Comanches had espied him, and waited there for him. Yet he struggled
bravely. The Indians have since acknowledged that, wounded as he was,
before dying, Captain Smith had killed three of their people.

Such was the origin of the Santa Fe trade, and such are the liabilities
which are incurred even now, in the great solitudes of the West.

CHAPTER XIV.

Time passed away till I and my companions were heartily tired of our
inactivity: besides, I was home-sick, and I had left articles of great
value at the settlement, about which I was rather fidgety. So one day we
determined that we would start alone, and return to the settlement by a
different road. We left Santa Fe and rode towards the north, and it was
not until we had passed Taos, the last Mexican settlement, that we
became ourselves again and recovered our good spirits. Gabriel knew the
r