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Show FORT KEARNY. 31 unaccustomed to the operation of packing, their mules, as was to be expected, were in a most horrible condition, with galled backs and sides that made one shudder to behold. The proper mode of arranging the load of these suffering animals is an art taught only by experience. These people, though belonging to a race famous for foresight and calculation, had, like others from less thrifty and managing portions of the Union, been selling and giving away all they could dispense with. While encamped here we have had several severe thunder storms, accompanied with heavy rains and violent winds. CHAPTER n. FROM FORT KEARNY TO FORT LARAMIE. Thursday, June 21.- Having taken leave of our kind and hospitable friends at the fort, we overtook our own train, which had been sent ahead in the morning, and found them encamped on the bank of the Platte, after a drive of twenty- five miles. Lieutenant Gunnison, who had gone before in his little wagon, by some means missed the camp in the darkness, and did not arrive, which gave me no little uneasiness, lest the exposure should prove detrimental in his very delicate state of health. We discovered, however, in the morning, that he had found good quarters at an emigrant encampment on the road. The character of the Platte valley for the last forty miles is that of a flat prairie, composed of sand and clay, in which, when the latter predominates, water is found standing in small pools, but when the sand is most abundant, the water passes through it like a sieve and is quite drained away. Hence we have passed innumerable little wells, dug to a depth of from two to four feet. The water is generally clear and cool, but much of the sickness on this route has been attributed to its use. The soil thrown out is sandy, though not unfrequently having a mixture of clay. The water thus obtained is evidently the result of infiltration from the higher levels or bluffs, which, in this hidden manner, discharge their surplus moisture into the river. The bluffs on the opposite side of the river, near Fort Kearny, are apparently formed of |