Note II-44 — Chapter II · ITINERARY, CONTINUED: FROM THE PAWNEE VILLAGE THROUGH KANSAS AND COLORADO TO PIKE'S PEAK, OCT. 1ST-NOV. 30TH, 1806.

Pike's Third Fork, charted "3d Fork," is the San Carlos or St. Charles r. His Grand Forks is the confluence of Fountain r. with the Arkansaw, at present city of Pueblo—perhaps the best known place where we have found him since the Expedition started. The Charles arises in the Wet mts., where also heads its main branch, called Greenhorn r., as in fact the Charles itself often used to be. Their streams unite in the prairie 8 m. S. of Pueblo, and fall into the Arkansaw 7 m. E. of that city, or about halfway to Fort Reynolds. It was in this vicinity that the old Cherokee trail forked, the right-hand road taking up toward the gold diggings, while the other kept on to Pueblo. The Greenhorn mt., about which the San Carlos heads, has an ascertained altitude of 12,230 feet. Fountain r. is still called Fontaine r. by those who prefer French to English, and used to be more elaborately styled La Rivière de la Fontaine qui Bouille, River of the Boiling Spring—not that the water is hot, but that it bubbles as it wells out of the rocks, as if it were boiling. "This spring," says Marcy, Pra. Trav. 1859, p. 300, "or, rather, springs, as there are two, both of which boil up out of solid rock, are among the greatest natural curiosities that I have ever seen. The water is strongly impregnated with salts, but is delightful to the taste, and somewhat similar to the Congress water." But before General Marcy's time the springs had become noted. On the 17th of July, 1843, they were visited by Frémont, who describes them at length in his Rep., orig. ed. 1845, p. 117; Mr. Charles Preuss, of his party, thought the water resembled that of the Seltzer Springs in the Grand Duchy of Nassau. About nine-tenths of the solid matters in solution is chalk. When I was at Manitou Springs, a few years ago, it was a common sight to see people in the electric cars with bottles of the water, which had already become an extensively advertised commercial article. Fountain r. has also its Spanish name of Rio Almagre or Almagra, meaning red ocher or other reddish earth. It is formed of two main courses which head about Pike's Peak and other elevations of the same outlying (Front) range of the Rockies, called respectively Fountain and Monument cr.; these unite at Colorado Springs. Monument cr., coming southward in the foothills, is composed of various others, called Beaver, Dead Man's, West Monument, Crystal, etc. Fountain cr., which comes eastward from Pike's Peak itself and that vicinity, seeks the plains by the villages of Manitou Springs and Colorado City, and the city of Colorado Springs (seat of El Paso Co.)—for such are the respective designations of these places, now well known to tourists and especially valetudinarians. At Manitou Springs it receives Ruxton cr., through Ingleman cañon, now traversed by the cogwheel Manitou and Pike's Peak R. R.; item, it receives Glen "Erie" (Eyrie) cr., which runs through the little mountain park called Garden of the Gods—a spot not favorable to agriculture and one whose alleged proprietors maintain their wonted alibi. Visitors who now inspect the natural curiosities hereabouts, including a cave of very respectable dimensions and disagreeable atmosphere, go up a carriage road which follows for some distance what was an old Indian trail between South Park and the plains. Fountain r., thus composed, runs S. along the E. base of the R. mts., receiving small affluents all along on either hand, as Bear, N. Cheyenne, S. Cheyenne, Sand, Jimmy's Camp, and Little Fountain creeks, and falls into the Arkansaw at Pueblo, as already said. It is Pike's "North Fork" of the Arkansaw, and this is the stream nearly parallel with which he proceeds via Turkey cr. toward the "high point of the blue mountain," i. e., Pike's Peak. His breastwork was built on the S. side of the Arkansaw, slightly above the confluence of Fountain r., and thus within present city limits of Pueblo—though the built-up portions of South Pueblo are mostly a mile or so from the confluence. A suburb of South Pueblo is called Bessemer, where stand the great smelters and other evidences of that commercial energy which has caused Pueblo to be sometimes styled "the Pittsburg of the West," though the pure air is not to be compared with the smutty gas one breathes at the old site of Fort Duquesne. A mile from Bessemer is Lake Minnequa, a resort of the Pueblonians for boating, beer, and music. Pueblo has retained for more than half a century a name that was originally not a proper but a common noun. Thus we read in Frémont, Rep. 1845, p. 116: "Continuing down the [Fountain] river, we encamped at noon on the 14th [of July, 1843] at its mouth, on the Arkansas river. A short distance above our encampment, on the left bank of the Arkansas, is a pueblo, (as the Mexicans call their civilized Indian villages,) where a number of mountaineers, who had married Spanish women in the vicinity of Taos, had collected together, and occupied themselves in farming, carrying on at the same time a desultory Indian trade. They were principally Americans, and treated us with all the rude hospitality their situation admitted." Frémont calls the river "Fontaine-qui-bouit" (not Bouille). I understand that Pueblo was known at one time, during the '40's, as Hardscrabble—a name now given to another place, for which see a note beyond. I am told by Mr. Maguire that "Jimmy's Camp"—now the name of a creek above said—was a traditionally well-known place where one "Jimmy" had a small trading outfit, mainly for the Utes; he was killed by the Plains Indians. Present Jimmy Camp is a hamlet about Corral Bluffs, 9 m. due E. of Colorado Springs.