In the fall of 1857 a report was sent by the engineers who were with General Johnston's army at Fort Bridger, and who had crossed the plains that year, to the Quartermaster's Department at Washington, stating it was impossible to find subsistence along the road for the number of animals it would require to transport the freight necessary for the support of the army. General Jessup, who was then Quartermaster of the United States Army at Washington, and as fine a gentleman as I ever met, gave me this information, and asked me if it would deter me from undertaking the transportation. I told him it would not, and that I would be willing to give him my head for a football to have kicked in Pennsylvania Avenue if I did not supply the army with every pound that was necessary for its subsistence, provided the Government would pay me to do it. We satisfied him after the first year's work had been done that we could do even more than I assured him could be done. There is no other road in the United States, nor in my opinion elsewhere, of the same length, where such numbers of men and animals could travel during the summer season as could over the thoroughfare from the Missouri River up the Platte and its tributaries to the Rocky Mountains. In fact, had it been necessary to go east from the Missouri River, instead of west, it would have been impossible in the nature of things to have done so, owing to the uneven surface of the country, the water being in little deep ravines and, as a rule, in small quantities, often muddy creeks to cross, at other times underbrush and timber that the animals could have roamed into and disappeared, all of which would have prevented progress had we started with such an enterprise east instead of west. But the country west of the Missouri River for hundreds of miles, so far as making roads for travel of large numbers of animals is concerned, is as different from the east as it is possible for two landscapes to be. The whole country from the west border of the Missouri, Iowa, and Arkansas was thoroughly practical, before inhabited by farmers, for carrying the very largest herds and organizations of people on what one might term perfectly natural ground, often being able to travel hundreds of miles toward the sunset without a man having to do one hour's work in order to prepare the road for the heaviest wagons and teams. The road from Missouri to Santa Fé, N. M., up the Arkansas River, a distance of 800 miles, was very much like the one up the Platte River, and over which millions of pounds of merchandise were carried, and where oxen almost invariably, but sometimes mules, did the work and subsisted without a bite of any other food than that obtained from the grasses that grew by the roadside.