Note II'-1 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: THROUGH OLD MEXICO, IN CHIHUAHUA, DURANGO, AND COAHUILA, TO THE PRESIDIO GRANDE, MARCH 22D-MAY 31ST, 1807.

The difficulty of trailing Pike in Mexico is twofold. His notes, hasty and stealthy under the circumstances, are necessarily meager, and rather excite than satisfy our curiosity to know more. Worse than this, all the maps of Mexico are poor. I have probably before me the best maps that exist; they do not compare with those we have used for most parts of Pike's route. The most helpful one I have found is that in Senate Misc. Doc. No. 26, 30th Cong., 1st Sess., accompanying a Memoir of a Tour to Northern Mexico, connected with Col. Doniphan's Expedition, in 1846 and 1847, by A. Wislizenus, M. D., Washington, Tippin and Streeper, 1848, 8vo, pp. 141. The author was a German scientist, interested in geography, geology, and botany. He went over much of the identical route which Pike traveled,—as far as Parras, near Saltillo,—and has left a luminous itinerary, for the publication of which we are indebted to the good sense of Thomas H. Benton. This I shall draw heavily upon, and wish to make my grateful compliments to its author in the beginning of this route.

The Fort "Elisiaira" which Pike has just left must not be confounded with the place on the river called Elizario, Eleazario, Elceario, etc., and described in my last note. He is starting S., on the main road, and the place where the gambling dovetailed so well with religion was the Presidio San Elizario, on the boundary between the then Provinces of North Mexico and New Biscay. Two roads led from El Paso to Carrizal, the principal place en route to Chihuahua. One of these went down the Rio Grande for several miles before it turned S. from that river, taking this roundabout way to avoid Los Medanos (the Sand Hills, of which more presently). The other, which Pike took, went directly S., approximately by the way the railroad goes now. To the right is a range of mountains; the valley of the Rio Grande recedes to the left; the way is over a sandy, shrubby plain, in some places so strewn with a kind of white limestone as to have given the name Tierra Blanca. Camp is at the place which Pike calls by the extraordinary term of "Ogo mall a Ukap" and charts as "Ojo Malalka." Both these terms are otherwise rendered Ojo de Malayuque and Samalayuca; and all these, with others I could cite, are forms of the name of the same spring or pool which was a usual first camp out from El Paso. It was in most seasons a necessary halt, on account of water in this long arid stretch, as well as a desirable one to make before encountering the Sand Hills. Pike charts two other bodies of water, off the road to the right or W., by the names of "Lago de la Condelaria" and "Lac de Susma"; there are several such, in fact, known as Palomas, Guzman, Durazno, Santa Maria, etc. Guzman is the same word as Pike's "Susma," and a personal name very well known indeed in Mexican history; but whether the same lake is another question. Candelaria is the present name of a station on the railroad below Los Medanos.