Christopher Carson | Page 3

occasionally bringing down a deer, and
even of shooting a ferocious grizzly bear or wolf or catamount. The
romance of the sea creates a Robinson Crusoe. The still greater
romance of the forest creates a Kit Carson. It often makes even an old
man's blood thrill in his veins, to contemplate the wild and wondrous
adventures, which this majestic continent opened to the pioneers of half
a century ago.
Gradually, in Kentucky, the Indians disappeared, either dying off, or
pursuing their game in the unexplored realms nearer the setting sun.
Emigrants, from the East, in large numbers entered the State. Game,
both in forest and meadow, became scarce; and the father of Kit Carson,
finding settlers crowding him, actually rearing their huts within two or

three miles of his cabin, abandoned his home to find more room in the
still more distant West.
Christopher was then the youngest child, a babe but one year old. The
wilderness, west of them, was almost unexplored. But Mr. Carson, at
his blazing fireside, had heard from the Indians, and occasionally from
some adventurous white hunter, glowing accounts of the magnificent
prairies, rivers, lakes and forests of the far West, reposing in the
solitude and the silence which had reigned there since the dawn of the
creation.
There were no roads through the wilderness. The guide of the
emigrants was the setting sun. Occasionally they could take advantage
of some Indian trail, trodden hard by the moccasined feet of the savages,
in single file, through countless generations. Through such a country,
the father of Kit Carson commenced a journey of several hundred miles,
with his wife and three or four children, Kit being an infant in arms.
Unfortunately we are not informed of any of the particulars of this
journey. But we know, from numerous other cases, what was its
general character.
It must have occupied two or three weeks. All the family went on foot,
making about fifteen miles a day. They probably had two pack horses,
laden with pots and kettles, and a few other essential household and
farming utensils. Early in the afternoon Mr. Carson would begin to
look about for a suitable place of encampment for the night. He would
find, if possible, the picturesque banks of some running stream, where
there was grass for his horses, and a forest growth to furnish him with
wood for his cabin and for fire. If the weather were pleasant, with the
prospect of a serene and cloudless night, a very slight protection would
be reared, and the weary family, with a buffalo robe spread on the soft
grass for a blanket, would sleep far more sweetly in the open air, than
most millionaires sleep in tapestried halls and upon beds of down.
If clouds were gathering and menacing winds were wailing through the
tree-tops, the vigorous arm of Mr. Carson, with his sharp axe, would, in
an hour, rear a camp which could bid defiance to any ordinary storm.
The roof would be so thatched, with bark and long grass, as to be quite

impenetrable by the rain. Buffalo robes, and a few of the soft and
fragrant branches of the hemlock tree, would create a couch which a
prince might envy. Perhaps, as they came along, they had shot a turkey
or a brace of ducks, or a deer, from whose fat haunches they have cut
the tenderest venison. Any one could step out with his rifle and soon
return with a supper.
While Mr. Carson, with his eldest son, was building the camp, the
eldest girl would hold the baby, and Mrs. Carson would cook such a
repast of dainty viands, as, when we consider the appetites, Delmonico
never furnished. It was life in the "Adirondacks," with the additional
advantage that those who were enjoying it, were inured to fatigue, and
could have no sense of discomfort, from the absence of conveniences to
which they were accustomed.
If in the darkness of midnight, the tempest rose and roared through the
tree-tops, with crushing thunder, and floods of rain, the family was
lulled to sounder sleep by these requiems of nature, or awoke to enjoy
the sublimity of the scene, whose grandeur those in lowly life are often
able fully to appreciate, though they may not have language with which
to express their emotions.
The family crossed the Mississippi river, we know not how, perhaps in
the birch canoe of some friendly Indian, perhaps on a raft, swimming
the horses. They then continued their journey two hundred miles farther
west, till they reached a spot far enough from neighbors and from
civilization to suit the taste even of Mr. Carson. This was at the close of
the year 1810. There was no State or even Territory of Missouri then.
But seven years before,