By sunrise on the 23d of May we had breakfasted; the tents were leveled, the animals saddled and harnessed, and all was prepared.  “Avance donc! get up!” cried Delorier from his seat in front of the cart.  Wright, our friend’s muleteer, after some swearing and lashing, got his insubordinate train in motion, and then the whole party filed from the ground.  Thus we bade a long adieu to bed and board, and the principles of Blackstone’s Commentaries.  The day was a most auspicious one; and yet Shaw and I felt certain misgivings, which in the sequel proved but too well founded.  We had just learned that though R. had taken it upon him to adopt this course without consulting us, not a single man in the party was acquainted with it; and the absurdity of our friend’s high-handed measure very soon became manifest.  His plan was to strike the trail of several companies of dragoons, who last summer had made an expedition under Colonel Kearny to Fort Laramie, and by this means to reach the grand trail of the Oregon emigrants up the Platte.

We rode for an hour or two when a familiar cluster of buildings appeared on a little hill.  “Hallo!” shouted the Kickapoo trader from over his fence.  “Where are you going?” A few rather emphatic exclamations might have been heard among us, when we found that we had gone miles out of our way, and were not advanced an inch toward the Rocky Mountains.  So we turned in the direction the trader indicated, and with the sun for a guide, began to trace a “bee line” across the prairies.  We struggled through copses and lines of wood; we waded brooks and pools of water; we traversed prairies as green as an emerald, expanding before us for mile after mile; wider and more wild than the wastes Mazeppa rode over: 

     “Man nor brute,
     Nor dint of hoof, nor print of foot,
     Lay in the wild luxuriant soil;
     No sign of travel; none of toil;
     The very air was mute.”

Riding in advance, we passed over one of these great plains; we looked back and saw the line of scattered horsemen stretching for a mile or more; and far in the rear against the horizon, the white wagons creeping slowly along.  “Here we are at last!” shouted the captain.  And in truth we had struck upon the traces of a large body of horse.  We turned joyfully and followed this new course, with tempers somewhat improved; and toward sunset encamped on a high swell of the prairie, at the foot of which a lazy stream soaked along through clumps of rank grass.  It was getting dark.  We turned the horses loose to feed.  “Drive down the tent-pickets hard,” said Henry Chatillon, “it is going to blow.”  We did so, and secured the tent as well as we could; for the sky had changed totally, and a fresh damp smell in the wind warned us that a stormy night was likely to succeed the hot clear day.  The prairie also wore a new aspect, and its vast swells had grown black and somber under the shadow of the clouds.  The thunder soon began to growl at a distance.