MAJOR LONG.

1819 Fourteen years have passed since Lieutenant Pike sold his two little sail boats to the Osage Indians as he left the Missouri River and started on his overland journey. Within this brief period a great invention has marked the progress of the century. After years of experiments, failures and disappointments; after sinking one vessel and abandoning others; Robert Fulton has returned from his trip to France, bringing with him his steam engine with which he had perfected water navigation, and by his genius linked together all the nations of the earth, increased the wealth and commerce of the world, and won for himself enduring fame.

The next exploring party was to start in a steamship owned by the Government of the United States, and under the leadership of Stephen Harriman Long. Born at Hopkington, New Hampshire, December 30, 1784, Long had graduated at Dartmouth College, and entered the corps of Engineers of the U.S. Army, in 1814; had been a professor of mathematics at the Military Academy at West Point, and had been transferred to the Topographical Engineers in 1815, with the brevet-rank of Major.

James Monroe was President, and John C. Calhoun Secretary of War, and they gave Major Long elaborate instructions as to his duty. We had owned the vast Louisiana Territory for sixteen years, and knew but little more about it than when it came into our possession. So, Long was to explore it and make a very thorough investigation of the "country between the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains, the Missouri and its tributaries, the Red River, the Arkansas River, and the Mississippi above the mouth of the Missouri."

On May 3, 1819, the party of nine started from the arsenal on the Allegheny River just above Pittsburgh, at which point they entered the Ohio River. Their steamer carried them down the Ohio to its junction with the Mississippi, a distance of about nine hundred miles, where they arrived May 30th. Here they turned north up the Mississippi River, about one hundred and seventy-five miles to St. Louis, which they reached June 9th. Then they steamed West up the Missouri, over the course that Pike had sailed fourteen years before, to the same point where the Osage River enters the Missouri, near the present location of Jefferson City and one hundred and thirty-three miles from the Mississippi River. The party divided; part of the number disembarked and proceeded with horses through Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska, meeting those of the party who remained on the boat at Council Bluffs on September 19th. There they established their winter quarters on the banks of the Missouri, about five miles below the present City of Council Bluffs, and so named because of a Council held with the Indians by the Government at that point. In the log houses, built by Pike and his party, and with the supplies they had brought on the ship, the party passed a comfortable and leisurely winter. On June 6, 1820, they started from Council Bluffs, the party then consisting of twenty men and twenty-eight horses. It is interesting to know what their pack ponies carried. Here is an invoice:

They followed along the Platte River, and stopped for a time at the junction of the North Fork of that River with the South Fork, where North Platte is now situated. Here they tell of watching the beavers cut down a cottonwood tree. They observed that when it was nearly ready to fall, one of the beavers swam out into the river and posted itself as a sentinel. As soon as it saw the tops of the branches begin to move, it gave the signal by giving the water a resounding slap with its flat tail, when every beaver scampered out of reach of the falling tree. It must have been a moonlight night when they were there, otherwise they would not have seen the beavers at work, for they reverse nature's order and sleep in the daytime, working at night. They sleep in their houses, with their bodies in the water, and their heads resting out of the water on a stick. At twilight, a wise old mother beaver comes out and swims all around the pond or river, looking and smelling. Their sense of smell is very keen, and those who wish to observe them do so from treetops near the water. If after a careful investigation, the sentinel decides there are no man people, or wild animals around, one slap of the tail on the water is given, and out pops the nose of every beaver of the band, and all proceed with their work, exactly where it ended at sunrise. If the one on picket duty sees or hears anything that seems suspicious, three sharp resounding strokes of the tail sends every beaver in a flash to his hiding place, and nothing will tempt them out again that night. They have an instinct for making a tree fall in exactly the place where they want it, and it is used as a foundation for the numerous dams they build in the streams.

On June 30th, Long's party got their first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. Later on, when they were camped near Ft. Lupton, opposite the Peak, they gave it the name of Long, its altitude being fourteen thousand two hundred and seventy feet.

None of the party were ever near the Peak. Two of them, more courageous than the others, rode out one memorable morning, under a cloudless sky, with their faces towards the snowy range—rode away to defeat and oblivion. As morning turned to noon and they seemed no nearer to the pinnacle than when they started, they retraced their steps across the silent plain. Thus they lost an opportunity of forever linking their names to undying fame. Had they proceeded, they could have electrified a nation by writing into their report a page that would have remained undimmed to the end of time. It was theirs, had they embraced it, to have discovered Estes Park, the gorgeous setting that crowns the approach to the King of Peaks. But they turned back; back from the snow-white mountains beckoning them onward; from the purple tints that veiled the mystic summits in a mellow haze; from the lights and shadows playing over hill and dale, under a canopy of fleecy clouds.

Beautiful Estes Park! Rarest gem of all the sparkling jewels that adorn the bosom of this fair world! In you the Divine Hand has created the masterpiece of all earthly beauty! You are so freighted down with scenic blessings that the mould was broken in your formation and there can be no duplication! Glorious is your resting place under the cloudless sky, as you lie in the embraces of the soft and balmy air that envelops you! Beautiful are your grassy slopes and velvet meadows, asleep beneath the gleaming stars, awake under the mellow skies, reaching away in a panoramic view of exquisite colorings! Faultless are Nature's highways as they wind in and out among your fir and spruce, your pine and aspen, through silvery glades and leafy dells, by rocky gorges and towering cliffs! Lovely are the azure lakes that rest against your mountain sides, reflecting in their limpid depths your rocks and trees, your lights and shades, your fleecy clouds and snow-clad peaks! How gentle is the flow of your sounding streams; how they eddy and fall; how they tumble and roar, as they hurry along to their far-away home in the sea! How grand and terrible are the awe-inspiring storms that gather in the mountains high above you, as cloud rolls upon cloud, black, dense, lowering; how the terrific peals of thunder crash from peak to peak, like the duel of artillery meeting on the field of carnage in the mighty shock of battle!