This was about half way on the journey, and on the border line between the United States and the Spanish provinces. Gregg makes the jump from the safe Arkansas to the risky Cimarron a distance of fifty-eight miles, two or three days’ travel, and without water, as well as without landmarks. The erstwhile boom town of Ivanhoe, of which one remembers talk in county-seat wars as far back as 1886, a little town far down in the dry country, is near the line of the old trail. Reaching the Cimarron, the trail bent up that doubtful waterway to Cold Spring, five hundred and thirty-five miles from Independence. There it took another leap to the southwest, over a country then fairly well known from the Spanish end of the line, and over a well defined road, which could not be mistaken. [Illustration: A RETREAT TO THE BLOCKHOUSE.] The Wagon Mound was a point of note, situated about six hundred and sixty-two miles west of the starting point. One might depart thence for Bent’s Fort on the Arkansas, located in a country very profitable for traders to keep in view; for above Bent’s famous hostelry on the mountain branch of the trail lay the yet wilder pack-horse commerce of the mountain trappers’ rendezvous, far more romantic and profitable, if less safe and steady than the wagon commerce of the prairies. From the Wagon Mound to the first settlements of the Mexicans, on the Rio Gallinas, was an easy stage, and to Santa Fé by this time all roads of the mountains thereabout pointed. It was seven hundred and eighty miles to Santa Fé, according to Gregg, the more modern chronicles making it seven hundred and seventy-five miles, the latter figures being for a part of the time above, and part of the time under the old Gregg estimates, which are singularly correct in view of Gregg’s facilities. The present Santa Fé railway follows the upper or mountain leg of the old trail, which went on up the Arkansas to Bent’s Fort, and did not take the leap into the desert. From the Wagon Mound on into Santa Fé the railway route is practically identical with the old wagon way. Thus we may see that this great highway, broken midway and deflected to the southward, was less than one thousand miles in length. There was no connection, except a rude sort of pack route by way of Taos and the Colorado River country, between the end of the Santa Fé trail and the California country. The wagons did not go that way. The later railway drops down along the Rio Grande valley, just as did the Chihuahua wagon road; and bends westward far below the old trails of Walker and Jedediah Smith, who started on their transcontinental voyagings from points higher up in the mountains than Santa Fé or Taos.