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Show LIMESTONE QUARRY- BITTER CREEK. 55 Near the quarry was a spring of pure cold water. A vein of trap, about six inches wide, passed perpendicularly through the quarry, and had evidently affected the rocks on either side. Leaving this spot, we struck across to the south, and joined the camp, which had been pitched just below a large warm spring that comes bubbling out of the ground and forms immediately a small stream. Temperature of the spring, 71°. Above the mouth of Warm Spring Creek, the hills become increased in height, and a lofty range runs north by west, evidently thrown up by internal convulsions, the strata having a considerable dip to the south- west. The banks of the Platte where it cuts through the range are apparently perpendicular, and from a distance appeared to be composed of red sandstone. The general dip of the rocks, where not disturbed, seems still to be toward the south- west, though very slight. Auguste Tesson, one of my very best men, was taken sick today with something very like the cholera. Thursday, July 19.- Bar. 25.68; Ther. 80°. Leaving the valley of the Warm Spring Branch, the road crosses over to a branch of Bitter Creek, an affluent of the Platte, down the valley of which it winds until it reaches the main stream. We followed this valley the whole day, crossing the stream several times, and encamped on its left bank after a short march of ten and a- half miles. We were detained here tfce following day by the extreme illness of Auguste, who was unable to be removed. We passed to- day the nearly consumed fragments of about a dozen wagons that had been broken up and burned by their owners; and near them was piled up, in one heap, from six to eight hundred weight of bacon, thrown away for want of means to transport it farther. Boxes, bonnets, trunks, wagon- wheels, whole wagon- bodies, cooking utensils, and, in fact, almost every article of household furniture, were found from place to place along the prairie, abandoned for the same reason. In the evening, Captain Duncan, of the Rifles, with a small escort, rode into camp. He had left Fort Laramie in the morning, and was in hot pursuit of four deserters, who had decamped with an equal number of the best horses belonging to the command. Bitter Creek is a fine clear stream, about fifty feet wide, with a swift current, and seems, from the great heaps of drift- wood piled up on its banks, to discharge a large quantity of water in the spring. |
