Comment by Ed. See volume xiv, note 179. Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot was a French zoÖlogist and author of voluminous works on ornithology. Among his writings was Histoire naturelle des oiseaux de l'AmÉrique septentrionale, depuis Saint-Dominigue jusqu' À la baie d'Hudson (Paris, 1807 and annually thereafter).—Ed. Pike's route from CaÑon City to the upper Arkansas and back has been much discussed; however, he did not go through the Royal Gorge. Dr. Coues thinks that he went north from CaÑon City, up Oil Creek, crossing the dividing ridge at its source and passing into South Park, to the South Platte River. Thence he crossed South Park to the westward, and penetrated the Park Range to the upper Arkansas, which he explored, mistaking it for Red River. Descending the river, the party scattered near the upper end of Royal Gorge, and passed around it by various routes through the mountains. Pike himself essayed the passage of the caÑon on the frozen river, but was compelled to abandon the channel when about half-way through it. The party reached the site of CaÑon City, which it had left December 10, 1806, on January 5, 1807. See Coues, Pike's Expeditions, pp. 464-478.—Ed. Comment by Ed. Height of Pike's Peak generally accepted as correct, 14,147 feet; Pike's estimate, 18,581. See ante, note 11. Pike wrote in his journal: "I believe no human being could have ascended to its pinical;" but it must be borne in mind that he reached the region late in November, when the difficulty of the ascent is immensely greater than at the season (July) when James's party made their successful attempt. The claim of Dr. James to the honor of being the first to reach the summit remains undisputed; but the peak has long since ceased to bear his name. When FrÉmont visited Colorado in 1843 he adopted the present appellation, which he found in local use among the traders, and the rival name soon fell into disuse by cartographers.
—James. This is a large species equal in size to the C. constrictor. It moves with great rapidity, and in general form and size it resembles C. constrictor. The scales are large. A specimen is in the Philadelphia Museum.—James. Body brownish cinereous, varied with greenish yellow; a triple series of fuscous spots; dorsal series consisting of about forty-four large transversely oblong oval spots, each widely emarginate before and behind, and, excepting the posterior ones, edged with greenish-white, the ten or twelve anterior ones, crowded and confluent, those of the thicker part of the body separate, those near the cloaca and upon the tail united with the spots of the lateral series, and forming bands; lateral series, spots rounded, opposite to those of the back; between the dorsal and lateral series is a series of obsolete, fuliginous spots, alternating with those of the two other series; head above scaly, scales of the superior orbits, and of the anterior margin, larger and striated; beneath yellowish-white, immaculate. Plates of the body 179; of the tail 27.—James. FranÇois Marie Daudin, whose specialty was reptiles, wrote Histoire naturelle, gÉnÉrale et particuliÈre des Reptiles (Paris, 1802-04), which is probably the work cited.—Ed. Comment by Ed. New York, 1815, p. 19. De Witt Clinton (1769-1828), the great promoter of the Erie Canal, was governor of New York from 1817 until his death, with the exception of one two-year term, beginning in 1822. The address referred to was delivered May 4, 1814; he was at that time president of the Literary and Philosophical Society. The nails do not in the least diminish in width at the tip, but they become smaller towards that part only from diminishing from beneath. "Testicles suspended in separate pouches, at the distance of from two to four inches from each other." Lewis and Clarke. They vary exceedingly in colour, and pass through the intermediate gradations from a dark brown to a pale fulvous, and a grayish. Dimensions (from the prepared Specimen).
Comment by Ed. The Philadelphia edition adds, after the words "First Fork," "as we learned from Bijeau." The Spaniards had two names for the river—Rio Purgatorio and Rio de Las Animas. The French equivalent of the former was RiviÈre Purgatoire, which appears sometimes in English in corrupted form, Picket-wire. The stream is of considerable size, heading on the slopes of the Culebra Range, near the state boundary, and flowing northeast across Las Animas, and corners of Otero and Bent counties. Comment by Ed. See p. 165 of the reprint, in our volume v. Comment by Ed. This stream was more probably the Cimarron, which heads near the source of the Canadian, in the Raton Mountains, which form the watershed between these two rivers and the Purgatory. The Cimarron flows eastward just south of the Colorado line. The upper waters of the North Fork of the Canadian are also in northeastern New Mexico, south of the Cimarron, but it is a smaller stream, and heads farther east. On Cimarron River, see Nuttall's Journal, in our volume xiii, note 203. The sources of Red River lie near the Texas boundary, in the Staked Plains, south of the Canadian. Long's expedition was the third ineffectual effort of the federal government to discover them. In 1806, Captain Richard Sparks attempted to ascend the river, but was stopped by Spanish cavalry (see chapter iii in our volume xvii). In the same year Lieutenant Z. M. Pike ascended the Arkansas with instructions to find the head of the Red and descend that stream. He mistook for the Red, first the Arkansas itself and then the Rio Grande, and like Sparks was prevented by the Spaniards from carrying his exploration to a successful close. Red River was not explored to its sources until 1852, when it was ascended by a party under Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, of the Fifth Infantry. An expedition under General McLeod, which left Austin, Texas, in June, 1841, and was captured by Mexicans, is thought to have visited the sources of Red River, but it furnished no topographical data which could be relied on. Long's party approached within perhaps a hundred and fifty miles of Santa FÉ.—Ed. Cervus Macrotis, Say.—Antlers slightly grooved, tuberculated at base; a small branch near the base, corresponding to the situation and direction of that of C. Virginianus; the curvature of the anterior line of the antlers is similar in direction, but less in degree, to that of the same deer; near the middle of the entire length of the antlers, they bifurcate equally, and each of these processes again divides near the extremity, the anterior of these smaller processes being somewhat longer than the posterior one; the ears are very long, extending to the principal bifurcation, about half the length of the whole antler; the lateral teeth are larger in proportion to the intermediate teeth than those of the C. Virginianus are; eye-lashes black; the aperture beneath the eye is larger than that of the species just mentioned, and pervious; the hair also is coarser, and is undulated and compressed like that of the elk (C. major); the colour is light reddish-brown above; sides of the head, and hair on the fore portion of the nose above, dull cinereous; the back is intermixed with blackish tipped hairs, which form a distinct line on the neck, near the head; the tail is of a pale reddish cinereous colour, and the hair of the tip of the tail is black; the tip of the trunk of the tail is somewhat compressed, and is beneath almost destitute of hair; the hoofs are shorter and wider than those of the Virginianus, and more like those of the elk.
This is probably the species mentioned by Lewis and Clarke, vol. i. p. 77, under the name of black-tailed deer, and more frequently in other parts of the work, by that of mule deer. It is without doubt a new species, not having been hitherto introduced into the systems.—James. The flowers are white, having in the calyx a tinge of brownish purple. They are about as large as those of G. coccinnea. The plant is three or four feet high, the leaves small and short, and the stem slender. This is the fifth species of gaura we have met with west of the Mississippi. The G. biennis of the Eastern States has not hitherto been found here.—James. Comment by Ed. On the Kiamesha (Kiamichi) see Nuttall's Journal, in our volume xiii, note 177. The fruit consists of radiating, somewhat woody fibres, terminating in a tuberculated and slightly papillose surface. In this fibrous mass the seeds, which are nearly as large as those of a quince, are disseminated. We cannot pretend to say what part of the fruit has been described as the "pulp which is nearly as succulent as that of an orange; sweetish, and perhaps agreeable when fully ripe." In our opinion, the whole of it is as disagreeable to the taste, and as unfit to be eaten as the fruit of the sycamore, to which it has almost as much resemblance as to the orange. The tree rises to the height of twenty-five or thirty feet, dividing near the ground into a number of long, slender, and flexuous branches. It inhabits deep and fertile soils along the river valley. The Arkansa appears to be the northern limit of the range of the maclura, and neither on that river, nor on the Canadian, does the tree or the fruit attain so considerable a size as in warmer latitudes. Of many specimens of the fruit examined by Major Long, at the time of his visit to Red river, in 1817, several were found measuring five and an half inches in diameter.—James. On the sources of the North Fork, see ante, note 51.—Ed. Comment by Ed. See reprint of Nuttall's Journal, in our volume xiii, p. 265, and note 204. The cotton-wood varies in magnitude in proportion to the fertility of the soil; and on the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Arkansa, it attains the size of our largest forest trees. It is sometimes exceeded in girth, and in the number and extent of its branches, by the majestic sycamore; but in forests where the two are intermixed, as is commonly the case, it is seen to overtop all other trees. A cotton-wood tree mentioned in the journal of the exploring party who ascended Red river in 1806, and spoken of as one of many similar trees standing in a corn field three or four days' journey above Natchitoches, measured one hundred and forty-one feet and six inches in height, and five feet in diameter. [Freeman's MS. Journal.] Though we have not actual admeasurements to compare with this, we are of opinion that many trees on the Arkansa would rather exceed than fall short of these dimensions. The cotton-wood affords a light and soft timber, not very durable, except when protected from the weather. Before expansion, the buds of this tree are partially covered with a viscid, resinous exudation, resembling that so conspicuous on the buds of the populus balsamifera, and diffusing in the spring and the early part of summer an extremely grateful and balsamic odour.—James. James H. Ballard was appointed from Maryland (1813) as second lieutenant in the Thirty-sixth Infantry. He was transferred to the Rifle Regiment in 1815, and two years later made captain. In 1821 he was transferred to the Second Infantry, and died in 1823.—Ed. Comment by Ed. Page 202 of the reprint in volume xiii of our series. Length from the nose to the cloaca, 3¾ inches. A specimen is placed in the Philadelphia museum.—James. The text and chapter headings include Original Edition page numbers and chapter numbers in [ ]; for example [212] Chapter I [VIII]. The page numbers of this edition, when present, are in the right margin. Obvious typographical and punctuation errors have been corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within the text and consultation of external sources. Inconsistent spelling of a word or word-pair within the text has been retained. For example, southeast south-east; gray grey; prairie dog prairie-dog. Spelling has been left as found in the original text; variations in spelling and hyphenation have been left as well, except for those changes detailed below. Note that some names are spelled differently in the main text and in a footnote; this difference is retained (for example, Le Sueur and Lesueur). Pg 5 'Cottonwood' changed to 'Cotton-wood' for consistency. |