to get over at that season. The general, however, ignoring
the statement, listened to another of his party, a man who had no such
experience but said that he could pilot the expedition. Before they had
fairly started, they were caught in one of the most terrible snowstorms
the region had ever witnessed, in which all their horses and mules were
literally frozen to death. Then, when it was too late, they turned
back, abandoning their instruments, and able only to carry along a
very limited stock of food. The storm continued to rage, so that even
Williams failed to prevent them from getting lost, and they wandered
about aimlessly for many days before they luckily arrived at Taos,
suffering seriously from exhaustion and hunger. Three of the men were
frozen to death on the return trip, and the remaining fifteen were
little better than dead when Uncle Dick Wooton happened to run across
them and piloted them into the village. It was immediately after
this disaster that the three most noted men in the mountains--Carson,
Maxwell, and Dick Owens--became the guides of the pathfinder, with whom
he had no trouble, and to whom he owed more of his success than history
has given them credit for.

At one period of his eventful career, while he lived in Missouri,
before he wandered to the mountains, Old Bill Williams was a Methodist
preacher; of which fact he boasted frequently while he trapped and
hunted with other pioneers. Whenever he related that portion of his
early life, he declared that he "was so well known in his circuit,
that the chickens recognized him as he came riding by the scattered
farmhouses, and the old roosters would crow 'Here comes Parson Williams!
One of us must be made ready for dinner.'"

Upon leaving the States, he travelled very extensively among the various
tribes of Indians who roamed over the great plains and in the mountains.
When sojourning with a certain band, he would invariably adopt their
manners and customs. Whenever he grew tired of that nation, he would
seek another and live as they lived. He had been so long among the
savages that he looked and talked like one, and had imbibed many of
their strange notions and curious superstitions.

To the missionaries he was very useful. He possessed the faculty of
easily acquiring languages that other white men failed to learn, and
could readily translate the Bible into several Indian dialects. His own
conduct, however, was in strange contrast with the precept