Note II'-44 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: THROUGH OLD MEXICO, IN CHIHUAHUA, DURANGO, AND COAHUILA, TO THE PRESIDIO GRANDE, MARCH 22D-MAY 31ST, 1807.

The main stream of Sabinas r. is crossed at the place now called Potrillo, and also Juarez, 10 m. from Alamo. This sets Pike at a point 17 m. further on a bee line for the Presidio Grande. His mapping of the "Millada" and Sabinas rivers is faulty to the last degree: see the map on this point. 1. The Millada (on which the letter "w" is engraved) should turn above that point and connect with the stream on which "Montelovez" is situated. 2. The main Sabinas (identifiable on the map by "△ Kan" engraved alongside Pike's trail) should have been carried clear up N. W., 100 m. or more. 3. The great river which Pike fetches into the Rio Grande at Presidio Grande, and which he runs down to this point from "Montelovez," does not exist. It is an imaginary river, compounded of about equal parts of upper portions of the two forks of the Sabinas, cut off from their proper connections lower down, and run into the Rio Grande about 100 m. too high up. The rest of the river (E. of Pike's trail) is connected with the Rio Grande about right—that is to say, below Laredo. Observe that Pike says nothing about crossing the mouth of any such river as his map shows just where his trail comes to the Rio Grande. It is a sheer blunder, which has baffled many a person who naturally supposed that Pike fetched up at the mouth of Sabinas r., some 40 m. below Laredo, but never could see how he got there, or how he got thence to San Antonio, or what in the name of geography the two rivers he crossed were anyhow. In fine, this affair of the Sabinas r. befogged the whole trail for several hundred miles, both in Mexico and in Texas. For my own part, I first tried to bring Pike to the Rio Grande at the mouth of Sabinas r., and very soon lost him in Nuevo Leon—to say nothing of the impossibility of trailing him thence to San Antonio. Then I tried the roads to Laredo, observing that this would do pretty well for the Texan side; but again I lost him in Nuevo Leon. Though the map itself indicated that Pike never was in Nuevo Leon (where General Salcedo, in fact, had no business to send troops, as it was out of his jurisdiction), yet political boundaries nearly a century old go for little on their face, and I was almost tempted to give the puzzle up. But I thought that I would try the experiment of disregarding the map altogether, and trailing Pike solely by his itinerary in the text. It was a week's work to satisfy myself that he was never over the present boundary of Coahuila after he left Durango, and probably never 25 m. on either side of the railroad from Mapimi to Sabinas r. There he was within two days of the Rio Grande, heading straight for the Presidio Salto; and a glance at his map showed me what the trouble was with that unlucky river.