Purgation to
assist him in his cattle and sheep ranche.

"I heard from him by letter once or twice afterward, in one of which he
asked me to procure for him the agency for the Utes. On inquiry at the
proper office in Washington, I found that another person had secured
the place of which I notified him, and though of late years I have often
been on the Purgation, and in the Ute country, I could learn nothing of
the other children of Kit Carson, or of William, who for four years was
a sort of ward to me.

"Since the building of railroads in that region, the whole character of
its population is changed, and were Kit Carson to arise from his grave,
he could not find a buffalo, elk or deer, where he used to see millions.
He could not even recognize the country with which he used to be so
familiar, or find his own children, whom he loved, and for whose welfare
he felt so solicitous in his later days.

"Kit Carson was a good type of a class of men most useful in their day,
but now as antiquated as Jason of the Golden Fleece, Ulysses of Troy,
the Chevalier La Salle of the Lakes, Daniel Boone of Kentucky, Irvin
Bridger and Jim Beckwith of the Rockies, all belonging to the dead past.

"Yours Truly,

"W. T. SHERMAN."

"TRENTON, N. J., June 23, 1884.

"In accordance with your request to give my recollections of Kit Carson,
I would say that I met and spent several days with him in September,
1866, at and near Fort Garland, Colorado, on the headwaters of the Rio
Grande. I was then Brevet Brigadier General and Inspector United States
Volunteers, on a tour of inspection of the military depots and posts in
that region and across to the Pacific. General Sherman happened there at
the same time, on like duty as to his Military Division, and our joint
talks, as a rule, extended far into the night and over many subjects.
'Kit' was then Brevet Brigadier General United States Volunteers, and
in command of Fort Garland, and a wide region thereabouts--mostly
Indian--which he knew thoroughly. Fort Garland was a typical frontier
post, composed of log huts chinked with mud, rough but comfortable, and
in one of these Kit then lived with his Mexican wife and several half
breed children.

"He was then a man apparently about fifty years of age. From what I had
read about him, I had expected to see a small, wiry man, weather-beaten
and reticent; but found him to be a medium sized, rather stoutish, and
quite talkative person instead. His hair w