the mazes of the wilderness.

Such were the perils upon which the youthful Kit Carson was now entering
from the pure love of adventure. He was not uninformed respecting these
dangers. The knowledge of them did but add to the zest of the enterprise.

Crossing the plains of the interior of our Continent from the Missouri
river to the Rocky mountains, was a very different undertaking half a
century ago, from what it has been in more modern times. The route was
then almost entirely unexplored. There were no charts to guide. The bold
adventurers knew not where they would find springs of water, where forage
for their animals, where they would enter upon verdureless deserts, where
they could find fording-places of the broad and rapid rivers which they
might encounter on their way.

This is not a forest-covered continent. The vast plains of the interior,
whether smooth or undulating or rugged, spread far away for weary leagues,
almost treeless. The forest was found mainly skirting the streams. Immense
herds of buffaloes, often numbering ten or twenty thousand, grazed upon
these rich and boundless pastures. Timid deer and droves of wild horses,
almost countless in numbers, here luxuriated in a congenial home. There
was scarcely a white man in the land whose eyes had ever beheld the cliffs
of the Rocky mountains. And each Indian tribe had its hunting-grounds
marked out with considerable precision, beyond which even the boldest
braves seldom ventured to wander.

About a score of men started upon this trip. They were thoroughly armed,
practiced marksmen, well mounted and each man led a pack mule, heavily
laden with goods for the Santa Fe market. Their leader was
commander-in-chief, whom all were bound implicitly to obey. He led the