The roads all running west from the Missouri River came up the valleys of the Platte, Kansas, or Arkansas rivers, running directly from the mountains to the Missouri River. These rivers had wide channels, low banks, and sandy bottoms, into which a thousand animals could go at one time, if necessary, for drink, and spread over the surface, so as not to be in each other's way, and whatever disturbance they made in the water, in the way of offal or anything of that kind, was soon overcome by the filtering of the water through the sand, which kept it pure, and thousands of men and animals could find purer water on account of these conditions. Then again the first expedient in the way of fuel was what was called buffalo chips, which was the offal from the buffalo after lying and being dried by the sun; and, strange to say, the economy of nature was such, in this particular, that the large number of work-animals left at every camping-place fuel sufficient, after being dried by the sun, to supply the necessities of the next caravan or party that traveled along. In this way the fuel supply was inexhaustible while animals traveled and fed upon the grasses. This, however, did not apply to travel east of the Missouri River, as the offal from the animals there soon became decomposed and was entirely worthless for fuel purposes. This was altogether owing to the difference in the grasses that grew west of the Missouri River on the plains and in the Rocky Mountains and that which grew in the States east of the Missouri. Thus the fuel supply was sufficient for the largest organizations of people who, in those days, were traveling on the plains. Armies, small and great, that found it necessary to cross the plains, found sufficient supply of this fuel, and it seemed to be a necessity supplied by nature on the vast open and untimbered plains lying between the Missouri River and the Rocky Mountains, far beyond the Canadian line to the north, without which it would have been practically impossible to have crossed the plains with any degree of comfort, and in cold weather would have been absolutely impossible. The small groups of timber growing along the streams would soon have been exhausted if used for fuel, and there would have been nothing to supply those who came later. History records no other instance of like nature, where an immense area of country had the same necessity and where that necessity was supplied in such a manner as on the vast plains west of the Missouri River. These chips would lay for several years in perfect condition for fuel. CHAPTER XVII. "THE JAYHAWKERS OF 1849."