I have my mercantile enterprise in a forward state of readiness for a start over the plains.

My caravan will not be a large one, about six or seven waggons with less than a score of men; but the goods I take are valuable in an inverse ratio to their bulk-- designed for the `ricos' of your country.

I intend taking departure from the frontier town of Van Buren, in the State of Arkansas, and shall go by a new route lately discovered by one of our prairie traders, that leads part way along the Canadian river, by you called `Rio de la Canada,' and skirting the great plain of the Llano Estacado at its upper end.

This southern route makes us more independent of the season, so that I shall be able to travel in the fall.

If nothing occur to delay me in the route, I shall reach New Mexico about the middle of November, when I anticipate renewing those relations of a pleasant friendship in which you have been all the giver and I all the receiver.
"I send this by one of the spring caravans starting from Independence for Santa Fe, in the hope that it will safely reach you.
"I subscribe myself, dear Colonel Miranda,-- "Your grateful friend,-- "Francis Hamersley." "Well, _teniente_," said his Colonel, as he refolded the far-fetched epistle, and returned it to the drawer, "do you comprehend matters any clearer now ?" "Clear as the sun that shines over the Llano Estacado," was the reply of the lieutenant, whose admiration for the executive qualities of his superior officer, along with the bumpers he had imbibed, had now exalted his fancy to a poetical elevation.