ances there was no possibility of trapping with any hope of
success. Once before the indomitable Indians had driven the trappers from
their country. And now again it was deemed necessary to withdraw from
their haunts.

To the trappers this was a very humiliating necessity. A council was held
and it was decided to abandon the region and to direct their steps about
two hundred miles, in a northeasterly direction, to the north fork of the
Missouri river. The journey was soon accomplished without adventure. The
trappers, far removed from their inveterate foes, vigorously commenced
operations. They had their central camp. In small parties they followed up
and down the majestic stream, and pursued the windings of the brooks
flowing into it. They generally went in parties of two or three.

Wherever night found them, whether with cloudless skies or raging storm,
it mattered not, the work of an hour with their hatchets, reared for them
a sheltering camp. Before it blazed the ever-cheerful, illuminating fire.
Rich viands of the choicest game smoked upon the embers, and the hunters,
reclining upon their couches of blankets or furs, exulted in the luxurious
indulgence of a hunter's life. With all the hardships to which one is
exposed in such adventures, there is a charm accompanying them which words
cannot easily describe. It warms the blood of one sitting upon the
carpeted floor in his well-furnished parlor to send his imagination back
to those scenes.

Men of little book culture, and with but slight acquaintance with the
elegancies of polished life, have often a high appreciation of the
beauties and the sublimities of nature. Think of such a man as Kit Carson,
with his native delicacy of mind; a delicacy which never allowed him to
use a profane word, to indulge in intoxicating drinks, to be guilty of an
impure action; a man who enjoyed, above all things else, the communings of
his own spirit with the silence, the solitude, the grandeur, with which
God has invested the illimitable wilderness; think of such a man in the
midst of such scenes as we are now describing.

It is the hour of midnight. His camp is in one of the wildest ravines of
the Rocky mountains. A dense and gloomy forest covers the hillsides. A
mountain torrent, with its voice of many waters, flows on its way but a
few yards beyond the open front of his camp. A brilliant fire illumines
the wild scene for a few rods around, while all beyond is impenetrable
darkness.