Note 149 — {188} CHAPTER IX {VII}

The route described on the next few pages is an impossible one. Chittenden characterizes it as "wholly indefinite and unsatisfactory" (American Fur Trade, p. 59). The date "July 12th," on the next page, does not appear in the Philadelphia edition, and was apparently inserted to remedy the confusion; it increases it, however, since the accounts of the journeys of two days (July 10 and 11) are intermingled in the text itself. From the camp of July 8 and 9, the party might, by noon of the tenth, have arrived opposite Castle Rock, which gives its name to the present seat of justice of Douglas County. This, however, would not bring them to a tributary of the Arkansas; by noon of July 11 they could have reached the upper waters of Monument, a branch of Fountain Creek, which unites with the Arkansas at Pueblo. The camp of July 10 is probably accurately located on the map, a short distance below Castle Rock. On the morning of the eleventh, the direction taken was almost due south, across the watershed between the Platte and Arkansas, which at this point is almost on the line between Douglas and El Paso counties. The map exaggerates the length of Boiling Spring Creek (see succeeding volume, note 10), or Fountain Creek, a branch of which (Monument Creek) they first encountered almost on the county line. The afternoon march carried them somewhat south of the base of Pike's Peak, necessitating the retracing of their route on the morning of the twelfth. The route on the eleventh probably lay through the region now famous as the Garden of the Gods.—Ed.