Numbers of cow buntings had been seen a little before we arrived at this encampment, flying so familiarly about the horses that the men killed several with their whips.
August 4th. We were still passing through a barren and desolate region, affording no game, and nearly destitute of wood and water. Its soil is evidently the detritus of a stratum of red sandstone and coarse conglomeratic, which is still the basis and prevailing rock. It appears to contain a considerable proportion of lime, and fragments of plaster stone and selenite are often seen intermixed with it.
Our morning's ride of sixteen miles brought us to a place where the water of the river emerges to view, rising to the surface of that bed of sand beneath which it had been concealed for a distance of more than one hundred miles. The stream is still very inconsiderable in magnitude; the water brackish, and holds suspended so large a quantity of red earth as to give it the colour of florid blood. The general direction of its course inclining still towards the south-east, we were now induced to believe it must be one of the most considerable of the upper tributaries of Red river. A circumstance tending to confirm this opinion was our falling in with a large and much frequented Indian trace, crossing the creek from the west, and following down along the east bank. This trace consisted of more than twenty parallel paths, and bore sufficient marks of having been recently travelled, affording an explanation of { 282} the cause of the alarming scarcity of game we had for some time experienced. We supposed it to be the road leading from the Pawnee Piqua village on Red river to Santa Fé.[55]
Two shrubby species of cactus, smaller than the great cylindric prickly pear noticed near the Rocky Mountains, occur in the sandy plains we were now traversing. One of these, which is about four feet high, and very much branched, has long and solitary spines, a small yellow flower, and its fruit, which is about as large as the garden cherry, is very pleasant to the taste. The fruit of the C. ferox, which was also found here, was now ripe, being nearly as large as an egg, and of a deep purple colour. The jatropha stimulosa, a congener to the manihot or cassada of the West Indies, a cassia, an amorpha, and many new plants, were here added to our collection.