presented to them the blessings of peace and the
horrors of war, that they consented to send a deputation, to effect if
possible, an amicable settlement of the difficulty.

We infer from the brief narrative that is given that Kit Carson was the
bearer of this Indian flag of truce. He was the friend of both parties. He
was alike regarded by both as eminent for his wisdom and his sense of
justice. He met the Sioux chiefs in council. After long deliberation, they
consented to retire from the Comanches' hunting-ground at the close of the
then season, and never to molest them more.

Carson returned to the Comanches with this announcement, and persuaded
them to accede to the terms. Thus a dreadful Indian war was averted.

Among some of these tribes Kit Carson found a beautiful and unusually
intelligent Indian girl, whom he married, and took to his home in the
fort.

It is the undisputed testimony of all who knew him, that he was a man of
unspotted purity of character in his domestic relations. By this wife, Mr.
Carson had one child; a daughter. Not long after the birth of this child,
the mother died. The father watched over the motherless infant with the
utmost tenderness. As she emerged from infancy to childhood he removed her
to St. Louis. Here he found the funds he had so carefully invested very
valuable to him. He was able liberally to provide for all her wants, to
give her as good an education as St. Louis could afford, and to introduce
her to the refining influences of polished society. She was subsequently
married and removed with her husband to California.

Sixteen years had now elapsed since Kit Carson left the log cabin of his
father, in the then wilds of Missouri, for the still wilder regions of
mountaineer life. Referring to this period, he says:

"During sixteen years my rifle furnished almost every particle of food
upon which I lived. For many consecutive years, I never slept under the
roof of a house, or gazed upon the face of a white woman."

He now, very naturally, began to long to visit the home of his childhood,
and to witness some of the scenes of progressive civilization, rumors of
which often reached him in the forest. Messrs. Bent and Vrain were in the
habit of sending once a year a train of wagons to St. Louis, to transport
their skins and to obtain fresh supplies. It was a journey of about six
hundred miles. There was a wagon trail, if we may so call it, leading
circuitously over the vast and al