Some little time after they had gone Lieutenant Vail, suspecting trouble, sent a man down the trail to investigate. A few miles away was a ranch owned by a man named Israels. The scout found the ranch devastated, with Israels, his wife and family brutally slain and all the stock driven off. He reported to Vail, who headed an expedition of retaliation--the first I ever set forth on. We trailed the Indians several days, finally coming up with them and in a pitched battle killing many of them. This was just a sample of the many similar incidents that occurred from time to time throughout the Territory. Invariably the Military attempted to find the raiders, and sometimes they were successful. But it seemed impossible to teach the Apaches their lesson, and even now there are sometimes simmerings of discontent among the surviving Apaches on their reservation. They find it difficult to believe that their day and the day of the remainder of the savage Indian race is gone forever. It was during this stay at Fort Grant that Company C was ordered to escort the first Southern Pacific survey from Apache Pass, which was a government fort, to Sacaton, in the Pima Indian country. The route abounded with hostile Apaches and was considered extremely dangerous. I have mentioned this as the "first Southern Pacific survey," but this does not mean that there were not before that other surveys of a similar character, looking to the establishment of a transcontinental railroad route through the Territory. As early as 1851 a survey was made across Northern Arizona by Captain L. Sitgreaves, approximating nearly the present route of the Santa Fe Railway. A year or two later Lieutenant A. W. Whipple made a survey along the line of the 35th degree parallel. Still later Lieutenant J. G. Parke surveyed a line nearly on that of the Southern Pacific survey. At that time, just before the Gadsden treaty, the territory surveyed was in the republic of Mexico. These surveys were all made by order of the then Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis, who aroused a storm of protest in the East against his "misguided attention to the desolate West." But few statesmen and fewer of the outside public in that day possessed the prophetic vision to perceive the future greatness of what were termed the "arid wastes" of Arizona and California. This was shown by the perfect hail of protest that swept to the White House when the terms of the Gadsden Treaty, drawn up by a man who as minister to a great minor republic had had ample opportunities to study at his leisure the nature of the country and the people with whom he dealt, became known.