The next stream of any importance was the Little Blue, along which the trail ran for sixty miles; then crossed a range of sand-hills and struck the Platte river ten miles below Old Fort Kearney; thence the course lay up the South Platte to the old Ash Hollow Crossing, thence eighteen miles across to the North Plattenear the mouth of the Blue Water, where General Harney had his great battle in 1855 with the Sioux and Cheyenne Indians.

General Ord, commanding the Department of the Platte at the time, and who had been out on the Alexis hunt, had some business to attend to at Fort McPherson, and I accepted his invitation to ride over to the post with him in an ambulance.

At last, on the morning of the 12th of January, 1872, the Grand Duke and party arrived at North Platte by special train; in charge of a Mr. Francis Thompson.

When Pike reached the country the herds were going south from the Platte towards their wintering grounds below the Arkansas.

Fortunately for "our train" we were well in advance and thus escaped the sickness that later dotted the valley of the Platte with graves.