the same peaks, glaciers, slides and lakes to think each time they are fresh features in the landscape.

You swing off from a level mesa on to a steep descent; you are going south-and down. The driver lounges carelessly on his seat and gazes sleepily at his turned-up boot soles. The coach gains speed from the grade, and the horses run as though the fiends. were after them to keep it from their heels. The gravel begins to fly, and the coach to rock, and the landscape fades to a dull blur as you jolt over a half frozen slide of earth and snow.

Suddenly your hair rises in horror as you observe that a short fifty feet ahead the road ends abruptly against a stone wall. You turn toward the driver, and see that he, too, has observed the obstacle and is fully awake to the gravity of the situation. His whole figure is tense with excitement, and his eyes, the pupils contracted to pin-points, are fixed upon the rocky barrier. But as yet he makes no attempt to check the flying horses, which intent only on their endeavors to escape the flying coach, seem gathering themselves to leap over the wall and off into nothingness.

Then, slowly, you see the reins leading to the horses on the near side begin to grow taut, and at the same time perhaps a little more slack runs through the driver's fingers to those on the "off."

That is all he does, but it proves enough. Just before you think, the horses are going to launch themselves over the wall, you see the inside one suddenly stiffen, settle back upon its haunches and begin to mark time, quite after the manner of the inside man of a line of soldiers going around a corner. The action of the outside animal is just the opposite. He accelerates his speed, leans in at an angle of 30 or 40 degrees against his team mate, and with his hoofs clacking against the foot or side of the wall, dashes through a half circle of which the stationary inner horse is the center. The other

two horses describe concentric circles between these extremes, the whole team, except for the sliding incident to the sudden stoppage, revolving as on a pivot, while the coach is skidding wildly sideways on its two outer wheels. As soon as the coach has swung around and righted itself, you see the rest of the road leading off in front of you, and down this you are whirled to repeat the performance at the next bend.

ride

We had no mishaps on our down to Juncal-not even an upsetbut narrowly missed a head-on collision. This was at the last bend before reaching Portillo. A driver of an empty goods wagon, coming up the grade, miscalculated the distance to a turning out place, and as a result we swung around the bend and face to face with him at a very narrow portion of the road. "Loads" have the right of way over "empties," and "downs" over "ups." We had all the right on our side, and our driver lost his temper and made no effort to stop his team until he was almost upon the other. Then he applied the brake and jerked up simultaneously. The coach skated and the horses sat on their tails and slid right into the midst of the other man's four. The latter was with difficulty restrained from bolting over the grade, and their fright was not to be wondered at. Immediately behind us, the other coach had to effect the same sharp kind of a pull up to keep from bumping ours, and behind the second coach, likewise the third. I have always been sorry that I was not out where I could get the benefit of the ensemble; those three four-horse teams sitting calmly on their tails in the middle of the road, the other team plunging and trying to break away, and the four drivers, reins in one hand and whips in the other, gesticulating wildly and swearing at each other in selected Spanish at the tops of their voices.

The trip from Juncal to Valparaiso, down the peerless Valley of the Aconcagua, was made by rail.

T

HE HISTORY of the far Southwest remains unwritten, but when the story of that great section is told, it will be no less interesting, and will prove just as essential for the completion of the account of our national expansion as is its companion section east of the Mississippi. In both, the trapper and the trader, the adventurer and the traveler, have played their part. In both, the foreign foe has appeared to dispute every inch of the territory claimed. And through both, the English-speaking race-here diplomatically, there forcibly has marched westward to the "south sea.'

The story of this westward movement is not one of which the American moralists may be proud at all times. It

has in it some questionable acts of statesmanship. The narrative, however, is a gripping one, and the accounts of the lives of the leaders are becoming more fascinating as the period in which they live becomes more remote.

Dr. Josiah Cregg was one of these early explorers. His health having declined "under a complication of chronic diseases, which defied every plan of treatment that the sagacity and science" of his medical friends could devise, he accepted their advice and sought strength on the prairies. He joined one of the spring caravans which left Independence in 1831, and returned to Missouri again in the autumn of 1833. "The effects of this journey," he writes in the preface of

his "Commerce of the Prairies," "were in the first place to re-establish my health; and, in the second, to beget a passion for prairie life which I never expect to survive." He took out a cargo of goods the following spring, and for the next eight years he was interested as a proprietor in the Santa Fe trade. A large part of this time was spent in the northern provinces of Mexico. From Santa Fe he would journey to Chihuahua and other provinces south and west of there, trafficking and trading with the inhabitants. These trading expeditions doubtless proved profitable financial ventures, but Gregg returned home late in 1838 determined to abandon prairie life. "An unconquerable propensity to return," however, induced him to resume his wanderings the following spring. He led a caravan over a new route along the Canadian river, a tributary of the Arkansas, and reached Santa Fe a month ahead of those traders who had gone by way of the Independence-Santa Fe road. After spending the summer in Chihua

hua, he returned by a similar route to Van Buren, Arkansas.

During this period from 1831 to 1840, Gregg crossed the prairies eight different times. He kept a careful journal of the daily occurrences, and from time to tinme contributed articles to southwestern newspapers. These articles dealt with the customs and manners of the people and with the resources of the country. Receiving encouragement from these contribu

tions, he finally decided to embody the results of his knowledge in a book. His work was published in two volumes in 1844, in both New York and London. It was so popular that two new editions were issued the following year, and a fourth and fifth were published in Philadelphia in 1850 and 1855. Two years later the sixth edition came out under the title of "Scenes and Incidents in the Western Prairies."

"Under the original title, 'Commerce of the Prairies,'" says Dr. Thwaites in his "Early Western Travels," "the little book has become a classic in the literature of Western history." It is

this book that has placed posterity under obligations to Gregg. His early His early travels, like the early travels of many of his contemporaries, might have attracted little attention if he had not left a faithful account of them. He has done more than this, however. He has left a most interesting record of the origin of the Santa Fe trade and of the modes of conducting it, of conditions in New Mexico, and of the Indians. The organization of companies, the duties and responsibilities of the members, the trials and difficulties of the march, together with its dangers and hardships, all have been faithfully and vividly recorded. The caravan has been described both in camp and on the march, even to the minute detail of the dress of its individual members and of the menu of the camp.

His work is also important because he gave the first connected narrative of the history of New Mexico, which was written in English and covered in his treatment the period from the earliest explorations down to his own time. He had access to the archives

of Santa Fe, and preserved accounts of some valuable papers which have since disappeared. His researches, therefore, render later historians of the Southwest dependent upon him some instances. His writings are of further value because they throw light upon contemporaneous events in Mexican history, and bring out the relations between that country and Texas and the United States during the period of Texan independence.

But more than anything else, Gregg is the historian of the Santa Fe trade. For about twenty-five years preceding the American conquest of New Mexico and California, caravans were fitted out annually along the western border of Missouri, journeyed to New Mexico, and returned, usually during the late summer or early fall. "Unlike the fur trade," to quote again from Dr. Thwaites, "which depended wholly upon friendly relations with the roving savages, the object of the Santa Fe trader was to avoid direct contact with the tribesmen who hovered like marauding Arabs on the

skirts of the advancing caravan. Safety, therefore, depended upon numbers and organization; a system of government was evolved by which a captain was chosen for the trip, a plan of fortified and guard-watched camps established, and a line of daily march arranged." The method was so successful that for thirteen years preceding 1841, the year when the Mexican customs-houses were closed, no trader was killed by an Indian, although many earlier casualties were attributed to the red men before the caravan system was fully developed.

It is in narrating the events connected with this earlier trade that Gregg is at his best. In his accounts of these journeys, the incidents become so real that the reader is made a participant in all that occurs. The calm and simple style in which thrill

ing adventures are told, arouses an interest and lends a vividness to the story which creates lasting impressions. Throughout the whole, however, the writer's zeal for the truth appears self-evident. Whether relating what he learned by contact with actors and events, or whether describing some remote period known only through documentary sources, he is painstakingly accurate and careful. "His enthusiasm for the 'broad, unembarrassed freedom of the Great Western Prairies' never flags; while his sober judgment checks all tendency to extravagance of statement. As a contribution to the history and development of the far Southwest, Gregg's 'Commerce of the Prairies' stands without a rival, and is indispensable to a full knowledge of the American past."

WILL ROSE.