WESTERN INCIDENTS. 127

riage, in company with the other two Commissioners’
when he expired almost instantaneously, and was taken
to the house of his friend Colonel Nutt, in Council Bluffs,
a& COrpse.

Commissioners, General Simpson and Major White,
together with Col. Nutt and Major L. 8. Bent, accom-
panied his remains to his home in Keokuk, where they
were received, and escorted to their last resting-place,
with distinguished honors.

General Curtis was a civil engineer of great experience
and good reputation ; an able and distinguished officer in
the army during the late rebellion ; and an upright, honest
man, respected and beloved by all who knew him.

He was one of the earliest advocates and promoters of
the Union Pacific Railroad, both in and out of Congress ;
and lived to see more than three hundred miles of that
sreat work completed, and accepted by the Government.

CONCLUSION.

Since the occurrence of the events hereinbefore re-
corded, other events have either transpired, or may be
predicted with some degree of certainty, in connection
with the Union Pacific Railroad, to which it may not be
improper to refer, in closing this somewhat prolix and
desultory narrative.

The Directors have fixed the location of the road over
the Black Hill Range of the Rocky Mountains, upon the
route followed by our party a portion of the distance on
its return trip from the Laramie Plains.

After three years spent in making the most careful
surveys of the Rocky Mountain Passes, extending from
the sources of the South Plate, on the south, to Fort
Laramie on the north, it was found that this route would