were not, it seems, many days' journey below the Yellowstone, and who told
them of "prodigiously high mountains,"--evidently the Rocky Mountains.
_Memoire de la Renaudiere_, 1723.]

Bourgmont was a man of some education, and well acquainted with these
tribes, among whom he had traded for years. In pursuance of his orders he
built a fort, which he named Fort Orleans, and which stood on the Missouri
not far above the mouth of Grand River. Having thus accomplished one part
of his mission, he addressed himself to the other, and prepared to march
for the Comanche villages.

Leaving a sufficient garrison at the fort, he sent his ensign, Saint-Ange,
with a party of soldiers and Canadians, in wooden canoes, to the villages
of the Kansas higher up the stream, and on the 3d of July set out by land
to join him, with a hundred and nine Missouri Indians and sixty-eight
Osages in his train. A ride of five days brought him again to the banks of
the Missouri, opposite a Kansas town. Saint-Ange had not yet arrived, the
angry and turbid current, joined to fevers among his men, having retarded
his progress. Meanwhile Bourgmont drew from the Kansas a promise that their
warriors should go with him to the Comanches. Saint-Ange at last appeared,
and at daybreak of the 24th the tents were struck and the pack-horses
loaded. At six o'clock the party drew up in battle array on a hill above
the Indian town, and then, with drum beating and flag flying, began their
march. "A fine prairie country," writes Bourgmont, "with hills and dales
and clumps of trees to right and left." Sometimes the landscape quivered
under the sultry sun, and sometimes thunder bellowed over their heads, and
rain fell in floods on the steaming plains.

Renaudiere, engineer of the party, one day stood by the side of the path
and watched the whole procession as it passed him. The white men were about