It seems strange that everyone lost sight of the productiveness that must lie in land that would sustain such quantities of grass-devouring animals; and that in the instructions given by Congress, the Presidents of the United States, and the Secretaries of War, to the leaders of these various exploring parties, the important question of irrigation should have never been considered, nor mentioned by the explorers themselves. It is true, irrigation was wholly unknown in our country at the time, but Egypt and China had been artificially watered for centuries, and it is strange that no Congressman or Government official, or enterprising newspaper editor called attention to this vital question. The Long party divided as it started East. Captain Bell with eleven men went down the Arkansas River, while Major Long with nine, went farther south in search of the Red River. They all met at Ft. Smith, in western Arkansas, the middle of September; thence the united party crossed through Arkansas to the Mississippi River, where their trip ended. Major Long looked like a college professor. He wore glasses over very black eyes; had thin, firm lips; high cheek bones; long wavy hair, and was close shaven, except for a little tuft of side whiskers back close to his ears. He later explored the source of the Mississippi River for the Government, and then became Engineer in Chief for the Western and Atlantic Railroad in Georgia. When Major Long in 1805 turned the prow of his steamer into the mouth of the Missouri River, the first that ever ploughed its waters, he little thought that just above the junction of those two rivers would some day, on the Illinois side of the Mississippi, be built a City that would be named Alton; and little did he think that, fifty-nine years later, at the age of eighty, his grave would there be dug, and there would he be buried. CHAPTER VII. THE PIONEERS.