etty little
recess in the mountain, with a fine spring, and apparently safe from all
invasion. Great preparation had been made for feasting a large party, for
it was a very proper place for a rendezvous, and for the celebration of
such orgies as robbers of the desert would delight in. Several of the
horses had been killed, skinned, and cut up--for the Indians living in the
mountains, and only coming into the plains to rob and murder, make no
other use of horses than to eat them. Large earthen vessels were on the
fire, boiling and stewing the horse beef, and several baskets containing
fifty or sixty pair of moccasins, indicated the presence or expectation of
a large party. They released the boy who had given strong evidence of the
stoicism, or something else of the savage character, by commencing his
breakfast upon a horse's head as soon as he found he was not to be killed,
but only tied as a prisoner.

[Illustration: AN INDIAN CAMP.]

Their object accomplished, our men gathered up all the surviving horses,
fifteen in number, returned upon their trail, and rejoined us at our camp
in the afternoon of the same day. They had rode about one hundred miles in
the pursuit and return, and all in about thirty hours. The time, place,
object and numbers considered, this expedition of Carson and Godey may be
considered among the boldest and most disinterested which the annals of
western adventure, so full of daring deeds, can present. Two men in a
savage wilderness, pursue day and night an unknown body of Indians into
the defiles of an unknown mountain--attack them on sight without counting
numbers--and defeat them in an instant--and for what?--to punish the
robbers of the desert, and revenge the wrongs of Mexicans whom they did
not know. I repeat it was Carson and Godey who did this--the former an
American, born, in Booneslick county, Missouri; the latter a Frenchman,
born in St. Louis--and both trained to western enterprise from early
life.

ADVENTURE OF TWO SCOUTS.

As early as the year 1790, the block-house and stockade, above the mouth
of the Hockhocking river, was a frontier post for the hardy pioneer of
that portion of the state from the Hockhocking to the Sciota, and from the
Ohio river to the northern lakes. Then nature wore her undisturbed livery
of dark and thick forests, interspersed with green and flowery prairies.
Then the axe of the woodman had not been heard in the wilderness, nor the
plough of the husban