[7]                            36
military possession for the United States. The road from Santa Fe to Fort Leavenworth presents few obstacles for a railway, and if it continues as good to the Pacific, will be one of the routes to be considered, over which the United States will pass immense quantities of merchandise into what may become, in time, the rich ani populous States of Sonora, Durango, and Southern California.
As a military position, it is important and necessary. The mom-tain fastnesses have long been the retreating places of the warlike parties of Indians and robbers, who sally out to intercept our caravans moving over the different lines of travel to the Pacific.
The latitude of Santa F6, determined by 52 circum-meridian altitudes of alpha aquilae, 23 of beta aquarii, and 3H altitudes of polaris out of the meridian, is N. 35° 44' 06''. The longitude,bj the measurement of 8 distances between Alpha Aquil» and the ), and 8 between Antares and the fl, is respectively 7A. 04m. 14*. 7 and Ik. 04m. 22s. 4. The mean of which is Ik. 04m. 18s. and the longitude brought by the chronometer from the raeridiai of Fort Leavenworth is Ik. 04m. 05*.5—(See Appendix No. 4.)
The place of observation was the court near the northeast cornet of the public square. The latitude may be considered fixed; hii satisfactory as the longitude may appear, I should, nevertheless, have greatly multiplied the number of lunar distances, had I not been in daily expectation of receiving a transit Instrument, will ¦which a set of observations on moon culminating stars could been made at this important geographical point.
The mean of all the barometric readings at Santa Fe indicate!, as the height of this point above the sea, 6,846 feet, and the neigh-boring peaks to the north are many thousand feet higher.
August 31.—Lieutenant Warner arrived to-day, but cannot yet be relieved from ordnance duty. To-morrow an expedition goes to Taos, but, as Mr. Peck is sick, I have no officer to send with it To-day apparently well authenticated accounts have arrived thai Armijo met Ugarte, about 150 miles below, coming up with a force of 500 regulars and some pieces of artillery; that he turned bad, and is now inarching towards us with a large force, rallying tit people as he passes, and that numbers are joining him from tit upper towns. In consequence of these reports, the general toi strengthened the force with which he is to march the day after to morrow to meet him.
September 2.—We marched out of Santa Fe at 9 o'clock, a. a taking no one of my party except Mr. Bestor, and leaving Lieutenant Peck, who is still an invalid, to assist Lieutenant Gilmer. W( descended the valley of the Santa Fe river, nearly west, for t« miles, when we left the river and struck across a dry arid plain intersected by arroyos, (dry beds of streams,) in a southwesterlj course. Twenty-three miles brought us to the Galisteo creel which, at that time, was barely running. The bed of the creekii sand and pebbles of the primitive rock, and lies between steel clay and lime-stone, traversed occasionally by trap dykes, which" one place are so regular as to resemble a wall pierced with wu