At Council Grove the desert trip began. The journey now became one across a treeless prairie, with water all too rare, and habitations entirely lacking. The first stage of the trail crossed the country, nearly west, to the great bend of the Arkansas River, two hundred and seventy miles from Independence. Up the Arkansas it ran on, past Chouteau's Island, to Bent's Fort, near La Junta, Colorado, where fur traders had established a post. Water was most scarce. Whether the caravan crossed the river at the Cimarron crossing or left it at Bent's Fort to follow up the Purgatoire, the pull was hard on trader and on stock. His oxen often reached Santa Fé with scarcely enough strength left to stand alone. But with reasonable success and skilful guidance the caravan might hope to surmount all these difficulties and at last enter Santa Fé, seven hundred and eighty miles away, in from six to seven weeks from Independence. When the Mexican War came in 1846, the Missouri frontier was familiar with all of the long trail to Santa Fé. Even in the East there had come to be some real interest in and some accurate knowledge of the desert and its thoroughfares. One of the earliest steps in the strategy of the war was the organization of an Army of the West at Fort Leavenworth, with orders to march overland against Mexico and Upper California. Colonel Stephen W. Kearny was given command of the invading army, which he recruited largely from the frontier and into which he incorporated a battalion of the Mormon emigrants who were, in the summer of 1846, near Council Bluffs, on their way to the Rocky Mountains and the country beyond. Kearny himself knew the frontier, duty having taken him in 1845 all the way to the mountains and back in the interest of policing the trails. By the end of June he was ready to begin the march towards Bent's Fort on the upper Arkansas, where there was to be a common rendezvous. To this point the army marched in separate columns, far enough apart to secure for all the force sufficient water and fodder from the plains. Up to Bent's Fort the march was little more than a pleasure jaunt. The trail was well known, and Indians, never likely to run heedlessly into danger, were well behaved. Beyond Bent's Fort the advance assumed more of a military aspect, for the enemy's country had been entered and resistance by the Mexicans was anticipated in the mountain passes north of Santa Fé. But the resistance came to naught, while the army, footsore and hot, marched easily into Santa Fé on August 18, 1846. In the palace of the governor the conquering officers were entertained as lavishly as the resources of the provinces would permit. "We were too thirsty to judge of its merits," wrote one of them of the native wines and brandy which circulated freely; "anything liquid and cool was palatable." With little more than the formality of taking possession New Mexico thus fell into the hands of the United