 on the Llano Estacado of West Texas. And when he sent out an army officer named John Pope to look for water, he didn't find any, but he spent three years drilling holes into the ground and trying to find it. Talk about fruitless. But the point here, right, not all army expeditions are equally successful. Not all army explorers' names go down in the history books as great triumphs. John Pope was not a triumph for a number of reasons, but this is one of them. So here's politics at play.