h they regaled with as much
relish as the epicure in the settlements enjoys his "joint of roast
beef."

[Footnote 10: We give the name which was applied to this river at the
date of the facts related in the text. It is now called the Humboldt
River.]

To a man not accustomed to this kind of meat, mule flesh and horse
flesh would not be likely to prove over tempting or appropriate
viands. Let him feel the pangs of hunger very sharply, and his ideas
of lusciousness and propriety in respect to food will rapidly change.
The civilized world has condemned the practice as belonging to
barbarians. A mountaineer, not being quite so fastidious, scouts these
ideas, considering them foolish prejudices of people who have never
been forced by necessity to test the wisdom of their condemnation. Let
the epicurean sages have their choice, eat horse flesh or starve,
and, they confidently maintain, horse flesh would gradually grow to be
considered a dainty, the rarer over beef, in proportion to its greater
cost.

The trappers of the western prairies, who wander thousands of miles
over barren as well as fertile lands, where game cannot exist from
stern necessity, are compelled to submit to all kinds of vicissitudes;
but, with buoyant spirits, they conquer results, which, a faint heart
and yielding courage would behold almost in their grasp but fail to
reach.

An emergency calls forth skill and great energies; and, in an
unexplored country where, as in the case here recorded, everything
living suddenly disappears, it is then that the wits of a trapper save
his life when an ordinary traveler would lie down and die.

Kit Carson and his men, at last, succeeded in reaching Fort Hall. They
were kindly received and amply provided for by the whites who then
occupied it as a trading post. Here they rapidly recruited their
strength, and in the course of a few days felt able to start out upon
a buffalo hunt. Reports had come in that large numbers of buffalo
existed in close proximity to the Fort. Kit Carson and his men were
not the kind who live upon the bounty of others when game can be had
in return for the necessary effort to find. They were also not the
men to hoard their stock of provisions whenever they met parties in
distress. The first query which different bands of trappers offer
to each other on meeting in the wilderness, is, "Does game exist in
plenty," or "is game plenty in such and such sections of country?"
This takes precedence