19J: LIFE IN THE FAR WEST. 



slenderly limbed, but with muscles of wire, with a fair complexion 

 and quiet intelligent features, to look at Kit none would suppose 

 that the mild-looking being before him was an incarnate devil in 

 Indian fight, and had raised more hair from head of Redskins than 

 any two men in the western country ; and yet, thirty winters had 

 scarcely planted a line or furrow on his clean-shaven face. No 

 name, however, was better known in the mountains — from Yellow 

 Stone to Spanish Peaks, from Missouri to Columbia River — than 

 that of Kit Carson, " raised" in Boonlick county; of Missouri 

 State, and a credit to the diggins that gave him birth. 



On Huerfano or Orphan Creek, so called from an isolated hutte 

 which stands on a prairie near the stream, our party fell in with a 

 village of Yuta Indians, at that time hostile to the whites. Both 

 parties were preparing for battle, when Killbuck, who spoke the 

 language, went forward with signs of peace, and after a talk with 

 several chiefs, entered into an armistice, each party agreeing not 

 to molest the other. After trading for a few deer-skins, which the 

 Yutas are celebrated for dressing delicately fine, the trappers moved 

 hastily on out of such dangerous company, and camped under the 

 mountain on Oak Creek, where they forted in a strong position^ 

 and constructed a corral in which to secure their animals at night. 

 At this point is a tolerable pass through the mountains, where a 

 break occurs in a range, whence they gradually decrease in magni- 

 tude until they meet the sierras of Mexico, which connect the two 

 mighty chains of the Andes and the Rocky Mountains. From the 

 summit of the dividing ridge, to the eastward a view is had of 

 the vast sea of prairie which stretches away from the base of the 

 mountains in dreary barrenness, for nearly a thousand miles, until 

 it meets the fertile valley of the great Missouri. Over tliis bound- 

 less expanse, nothing breaks the uninterrupted solitude of the 

 view. Not a tree or atom of foliage relieves the eye ; for the 

 lines of scattered timber which belt the streams running from the 

 mountains, are lost in the shadow of their stupendous height, and 



