[50] See Bradbury's Travels, p. 161, second edition.--JAMES. _Comment by Ed._ See p. 165 of the reprint, in our volume v. [51] From a subsequent comparison of the direction of several water courses which descend from this elevated district, we have been induced to consider the creek mentioned in the text as one of the most remote sources of the great northern tributary of the Canadian river.--JAMES. _Comment by Ed._ This stream was more probably the Cimarron, which heads near the source of the Canadian, in the Raton Mountains, which form the watershed between these two rivers and the Purgatory. The Cimarron flows eastward just south of the Colorado line. The upper waters of the North Fork of the Canadian are also in northeastern New Mexico, south of the Cimarron, but it is a smaller stream, and heads farther east. On Cimarron River, see Nuttall's _Journal_, in our volume xiii, note 203. [52] The stream in question was not a branch of Red River, but, as appears later, a tributary of the Canadian branch of the Arkansas (see Nuttall's _Journal_, in our volume xiii, note 188). The course of the party after leaving the Purgatory carried them east of that portion of the Canadian which flows south near the base of the mountains, and brought them to some creek which joins the Canadian near the Texas line. A stream in this locality, presumably the one descended, has been named Major Long's Creek. The map is therefore wrong in placing the route of the party along the portion of the upper course of the Canadian, which is thereon marked "Rio Mora" (Raspberry River). Moreover, the Mora is not the main stream of the Canadian, as the map indicates, but a tributary from the west. The sources of Red River lie near the Texas boundary, in the Staked Plains, south of the Canadian. Long's expedition was the third ineffectual effort of the federal government to discover them. In 1806, Captain Richard Sparks attempted to ascend the river, but was stopped by Spanish cavalry (see chapter iii in our volume xvii). In the same year Lieutenant Z. M. Pike ascended the Arkansas with instructions to find the head of the Red and descend that stream. He mistook for the Red, first the Arkansas itself and then the Rio Grande, and like Sparks was prevented by the Spaniards from carrying his exploration to a successful close. Red River was not explored to its sources until 1852, when it was ascended by a party under Capt. Randolph B. Marcy, of the Fifth Infantry. An expedition under General McLeod, which left Austin, Texas, in June, 1841, and was captured by Mexicans, is thought to have visited the sources of Red River, but it furnished no topographical data which could be relied on. Long's party approached within perhaps a hundred and fifty miles of Santa Fé.--ED.