In our course today we left the Platte several miles to the right and entered on a high region. At noon we stopped by a small stream of good water, which winds along in an easterly direction between the hills and the river. In the evening we stopped on the same stream higher up. Grass poor. Today we met a man who was in search of a horse which had run away from him in a buffalo herd. He had himself become lost, a considerable distance from the road, was without food or arms, except a single pistol. Saw numerous herds of buffalo and represented the country as barren and desolate. His horse had been taken up by another company, and when we saw him, he was in search of his own. Day warm. Distance, seventeen miles. MAY 19. In consequence of there being little grass where we stopped last night, we were off early this morning, and intended to cross the south fork of the Platte before we stopped, which we supposed was about ten miles distant. Today I saw almost countless numbers of buffalo. I saw several shot and a great many dead by the road. They are huge animals, some of them larger than any I ever saw; ran in a clumsy sort of canter, yet they are not slow, as it takes a good horse to overtake them. A man stayed with us last night who had got lost while in pursuit of the game. He and another man had killed three, and had some choice cuts with them. In the morning I lent my rifle to one of our party who wished to go hunting. In a couple of hours he came up with the gun broken; he said it was done in a hand-to-hand encounter with a buffalo. But I shall not state the particulars, as I have reason to discredit his story. About noon we reached the south fork of the Platte and crossed it immediately. This river where we cross it is about one mile wide, with an average depth of about one foot. It is entirely different from any other river I ever saw in the States. The bed of the river is a kind of quicksand, into which a horse will sink several inches by standing still a few moments. Another of our men has just returned from buffalo hunting. He succeeded in killing one, but not till he had fired twelve bullets at it. The balls at the head rebounded as from the solid rock. This evening one of our men found a human skull near our wagons. It was perforated by a ball just above the left eye and through the back of the head. We examined it and conjectured how it came here--whether Indian or white, male or female. But all our conjectures could not draw from its eyeless hole one ray of its history, nor awake a slumbering echo in its hollow ear. "Alas, poor Yorick! Is that a place where a god may dwell?" We have passed more than fifty wagons today. In the afternoon a thunder shower came up in the west, and for two or three hours threatened heavy rain; and at length, after shedding a few drops, it passed round to the south. We have been just one week in coming from Fort Kearney, a distance of 125 miles. At this rate we shall reach Fort Laramie by the first of