Note III-22 — Chapter III · ITINERARY, CONCLUDED: LEECH LAKE TO ST. LOUIS, FEBRUARY 1ST-APRIL 30TH, 1806.

There is difficulty in adjusting the discrepant records of Mar. 3d and 4th with those of Christmas week, 1805: see back, Dec. 17th-25th, and notes there. The party were then toiling by Crow Wing r., between Ripley and Brainerd; Pike did not keep with his men, and some of the discrepancies may be due to actual difference between his movements and theirs. Pike also says, Dec. 23d, that he was scarcely able to make his notes intelligible. The two records contradict instead of corroborating each other. Thus, Dec. 17th has it that the two-barrel cache (pork and flour) was made that day, not the 19th, as above said; and it was at or near Ripley. Dec. 20th one barrel of flour was buried; the party were then so close on to Crow Wing r. that Pike got there early next morning. He did not leave Crow Wing r. till after he had taken the latitude there, on the 24th. Meanwhile, his men were struggling up to this river. It is really a small matter, of no more than some 16 m. direct, or 20 m. by the Mississippi, and thus hardly worth dwelling on; but I like to be accurate when I can. Pike was camped at Brainerd Dec. 26th and Mar. 2d; he raised his one-barrel cache of Dec. 20th, near Crow Wing r., on Mar. 3d, and continued on down to the Nokasippi, which had been passed on or about Dec. 18th, not 21st, as above; on Mar. 4th he came to the two-barrel cache which he had made on Dec. 17th, not 19th, as above said, when he was in the vicinity of Ripley; he continues to-day past Ripley, past his three days' camp of Dec. 14th, 15th, and 16th, above Olmsted's bar, and fetches up to-night opposite his camp of Dec. 13th, in the vicinity of Topeka. Mar. 5th finds him at his stockade on Swan r. The camp of Mar. 3d, at the Nokasippi r., is an absolutely fixed point, as this is the only river that falls in from the E. hereabouts. "Pine Camp" of the above paragraph is the place where he was camped for three days, Dec. 14th, 15th, 16th, in the vicinity of Olmsted's bar.