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, in 1803, France had ceded to the United States the vast
unexplored regions, whose boundaries even, were scarcely defined, but
which were then called Upper Louisiana.

Here Mr. Carson seems to have reached a very congenial home. He found,
scattered through the wilderness, a few white people, trappers, hunters,
wanderers who had preceded him. The Indians, in numerous bands, as hunters
and as warriors, were roving these wilds. They could not be relied upon,
whatever their friendly professions. Any wrong which they might receive
from any individual white man, their peculiar code of morals told them