Charles Burdett - Life of Kit Carson, the Great Western Hunter and Guide

To return to the camp of trappers, and witness one day's duties, may be gratifying to the reader. With early dawn the traps are visited, and the beaver secured. The traps are re-adjusted, and the game brought into camp – or left to be skinned where it is if the camp is far away. Meantime breakfast has been prepared by one of the party; others have looked after the animals, relieving the watch which is still kept up lest a stampede occur while all are sleeping. Carson could not be cook for the party constantly, but takes his turn with the rest, and by the nice browning of his steak, and the delicacy of his acorn coffee, and the addition to their meal of roasted kamas root, he proves the value of the apprenticeship of his earlier years. He has a dish of berries, too, and surprises the party with this tempting dessert, as well as with the information that in his rambles the day before he had dined with an old Californian, with his wife and daughters, and had the promise from them of a cow, if he would call for it on the morrow.

Breakfast over, and the remains put by for lunch at noon, Carson mounts his pony, and riding a few miles down the bank swims the river, and dashing out among the hills with a high round mountain peak in view, still miles away, is lost among the oak groves for a score of miles, and at length emerges on Susan bay, and doffs his hat and makes his bow to the young Señorita who greets him at the door with a smile of welcome. The sun is low; dinner waits – hot bread, and butter, and cheese, and coffee with sugar, are added to the venison and beef, and Irish and sweet potatoes. Amid the civilities and pleasant chat, the hour passes happily, and Carson proposes returning to his party.

The ladies will not allow him to depart. Will he not accept the hospitality of their mansion for a single night? They do not urge after one refusal, because his every feature indicates the decision of his character. He must go. His horse is brought – a young and beautiful animal – and the cow, this object of his second journey thither, given him in charge as he mounts, with a rope attached to her horns, by which to lead her. The full moon is rising, on which he had calculated, as he told his hostesses, and with words of pleasant compliment, with which the Spanish language so much more than ours abounds, and a Buenos noches, señor , from his entertainers, and Buenos noches, señoritas , in return, he slowly winds his silent way on and on through the oak groves and the wild oats covering the hill-sides, hearing only the song of the owl and the whippoorwill, the music of the insects, and the whispering leaves, but with ear ever open to detect the stealthy tread of the monster of the wood and hills – the grizzly bear. Off on the distant hill he sees one, with a cub following her; but game is plenty, and deer is good enough food for her. On, on he goes at slow pace, for he has a delicate charge, and already is she restive from very weariness, though his pace is slow.

Half his journey is completed as the gray of dawn and the twinkle of the star of morning relieves the tedium and anxiety of his loneliness. He has made the circuit of the bay. The river is before him as he descends the hill which he has ascended for observation. Morning broadens. The flowers glow with variegated beauty as he tramples them, and in some patches the odor of the crushed dewy beauties fills the air to satiety.

A few miles more of travel and he crosses the river, and is again in the river-bottom where the party have taken the beaver. He stops at an Indian village, and dines from the liberal haunch and the acorn bread the chief presents, and with good feelings displayed on either side, takes in his arms a young papoose, the digger's picaninny, and salutes it with a kiss. Kit leaves there a trifling, but to them, valuable memorial of his visit, mounts his sorrel which is restive under the slow gait to which he has restrained him, takes the rope again which secures his treasure, the cow, and plods towards home at evening. The camp fire smokes in the distance, while the few horses that remain are staked about, and the sentinel paces up and down to keep off the drowsiness induced by fatigue and a hearty meat supper. The eastern and the western horizon are lighted with pale silver by the departing god of day, and the approaching goddess of the night, and the still river divides the plain, bounded only by the horizon, except he look behind him. Such is the scene as, approaching, the sentinel raises his gun and gives the challenge to halt. But the rest of the camp are not yet sleeping, and a dozen voices shout in the still evening a glad welcome to Carson, for whom they were not concerned, for they well knew there was not one of the party so well able to take care of himself as he.

Peters, in his "Life of Carson," tells the story of two expeditions which Carson led against the Indians, while they trapped upon the Sacramento, which give proof of his courage, and thorough education in the art of Indian warfare, which had become a necessity to the voyageur on the plains, and in the mountains of the western wilds. With his quick discrimination of character, and familiarity with the habits of the race, he could not but know the diggers were less bold than the Apaches and Camanches, with whom he was before familiar.

The Indians at the Mission San Gabriel, were restive under coerced labor, and forty of them made their escape to a tribe not far away.

The mission demanded the return of these fugitives, and being refused, gave battle to the neighboring tribe, but were defeated. The Padre sent to the trappers for assistance to compel the Indians not to harbor their people. Carson and eleven of his companions volunteered to aid the mission, and the attack upon the Indian village resulted in the destruction of a third of its inhabitants, and compelled them to submission. Capt. Young found at this mission a trader to take his furs, and from them purchased a drove of horses. Directly after his return, a party of Indians contrived to drive away sixty horses from the trappers, while the sentinel slept at night. Carson with twelve men were sent in pursuit. It was not difficult to follow the fresh trail of so large a drove, yet he pursued them a hundred miles, and into the mountains, before coming up with them. The Indians supposed themselves too far away to be followed, and were feasting on the flesh of the stolen horses they had slaughtered. Carson's party arranged themselves silently and without being seen, and rushing upon the Indian camp, killed eight men, and scattered the remainder in every direction. The horses were recovered, except the six killed, and partly consumed, and with three Indian children left in camp, they returned to the joyful greetings of their friends.

Early in the autumn of 1829, Mr. Young and his party of trappers set out on their return home. On their route they visited Los Angelos, formerly called Pueblo de los Angelos, "the city of the angels," a name which it received on account of the exceedingly genial climate, and the beauty of the surrounding country. It is situated on a small river of the same name, 30 miles from its mouth, and on the road between the cities of San Jose and San Diego. It is about three hundred and fifty miles east of San Francisco, and a hundred miles to the south.

Although to very many thousands of readers, anything on the subject of the climate of California may seem superfluous, yet there are as many thousands who have no really distinct idea of the country or the climate, and we therefore quote from Rev. Dr. Bushnell, whose article on those topics in the "New Englander," in 1858, attracted justly such universal attention:

"The first and most difficult thing to apprehend respecting California is the climate, upon which, of course, depend the advantages of health and physical development, the growths and their conditions and kinds, and the modus operandi , or general cast, of the seasons. But this, again, is scarcely possible, without dismissing, first of all, the word climate , and substituting the plural, climates. For it cannot be said of California, as of New England, or the Middle States, that it has a climate. On the contrary, it has a great multitude, curiously pitched together, at short distances, one from another, defying too, not seldom, our most accepted notions of the effects of latitude and altitude and the defences of mountain ranges. The only way, therefore, is to dismiss generalities, cease to look for a climate, and find, if we can, by what process the combinations and varieties are made; for when we get hold of the manner and going on of causes, all the varieties are easily reducible.