Note I'-17 — Chapter I · ITINERARY: THROUGH NEW MEXICO ON THE RIO GRANDE TO EL PASO, FEB. 27TH-MAR. 21ST, 1807.

No crossing of the Rio Grande is indicated on Pike's map anywhere along here, his trail being dotted continuously on the E. side of the river. But it is quite certain that he crossed a little below old Albuquerque to Atrisco. There was here a ford, regularly used when the water was not too high. The railroad now crosses some miles lower down, between Isleta station and Isleta. Atrisco was a very well-known name, in consequence of the ford, before the days of the railroads, but is hardly to be found on ordinary maps of to-day. When I first crossed the Rio Grande, June 23d, 1864, our outfit was ferried over some 20 m. below Albuquerque, between places called Los Pinos on the E. and Las Lunas on the W. "Los Pinos" is short for Bosque or Alamo de los Pinos, as they called the large fine grove of cottonwoods there, but I do not think there were any pines. A couple of miles below was the hacienda of Mariano Chavez, brother of the unfortunate A. J. Chavez who was murdered near the Little Arkansaw: see note10, p. 424; M. Chavez was dead himself before 1847. The place where Pike so joyfully met the blooming Robinson is left open to question in the present text. If by the "next village" he means the next one he came to after leaving Albuquerque, this was certainly at or near the site of Atrisco. This is really the implication; otherwise we should have to go a good ways down the W. bank of the Rio Grande, to site of present Pajarito, or perhaps Isleta, at which latter place is now the junction of the Atl. and Pac. with the A., T., and S. F. R. R. The doubt is cleared away by the text of the 8th, where it appears that Pike visited Tousac (see next note) 3 m. from the village where Robinson was, and on the same (W.) side of the river, where the troops had been sent over night; and was then carted back over to the E. side of the river. He simply visited across the Rio Grande, as he had done at San Felipe, and then returned to continue his regular journey down the E. side. But neither of these two cases is put very clearly at first blush in the narrative.