Striking southwest, and following as well as he could the broad trail left by the Spaniards, Pike reached Arkansas, where he stopped long enough to build canoes, in which Lieutenant Wilkinson with five soldiers and two Osages descended the river. This officer reached the post of Arkansas on January 6, 1807, after a journey marked by many hardships, but no great dangers. Captain Pike and Doctor Robinson pursued their route up the Arkansas with the party, now reduced to fourteen soldiers and the interpreter, Vasquez. On the 2d of November, they fell in with a large herd of wild horses, beautiful bays, blacks, and grays, whom they were unable to capture even with their fleetest coursers. Here also the buffalo were present in numbers beyond imagination, as Pike thought. The 15th of November was a marked day, for Pike records that "at two o'clock in the afternoon I thought I could distinguish a mountain to our right, which appeared like a small blue cloud.... In half an hour they appeared in full view before us. When our small party arrived on the hill they with one accord gave three cheers to the Mexican mountains." The peak, first seen by Pike, remained in view from that day to the 27th of January, and in eternal commemoration of the hardships and dangers of the discoverer in that journey fittingly bears in our day the name of Pike's Peak. Here they first strikingly realized the transparency and purity of the mountain air, which to the eye quite annihilates distance. He writes: "Marched at our usual hour, pushed with an idea of arriving at the mountains, but found at night no visible difference in their appearance from what we did yesterday." It may be added that eight days' march brought the party only to the base of the mountains. On November 22d he fell in with an unsuccessful war-party, composed of sixty Pawnees, returning from a foray on the Comanches. The savages at first acted in a friendly manner, but receiving some small presents, demanded ammunition, corn, blankets, kettles, and indeed everything they saw. Being refused they threw away in contempt the articles given. Pike ordered the horses packed, when the Pawnees encircled the small party and commenced stealing everything they could, when Pike commanded his men to stand to arms, and to separate themselves from the savages. This done an order was given to kill the first Indian who touched any piece of baggage, when the Pawnees, realizing that further misconduct meant fight, filed off and allowed them to depart.