Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVI., December, 1880. by Various
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page 12 of 281 (04%)
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seemed rather to court it. Accounts of their adventures--now a struggle
with a wounded bear, again the threatened perils of starvation when lost in some mountain-fastness--have long simultaneously terrified and fascinated both young and old. We all have pictured their dress--the coat or cloak, often an odd combination of several varieties of skins pieced together, with fur side in; breeches sometimes of the same material, but oftener of coarse duck or corduroy; and the slouched hat, under whose broad brim whatever of the face that was not concealed by a shaggy, unkempt beard shone out red from exposure to sun and weather. The American Fur Company had dotted the country with forts, which served the double purpose of storehouses for the valuables collected and of places where the employés could barricade themselves against the too-often troublesome savages. For such a purpose, though not actually by the Fur Company, was built the old adobe fort the ruins of which are still to be seen on the banks of the Arkansas at Pueblo. How old it may have been no one seems to know, but certain it is that for long years, and in the earliest times, it was a favorite rendezvous. Here was always to be found a jolly good party to pass away the long winter evenings with song and story. Here Kit Carson often stopped to rest from his many perilous expeditions, enjoying, together with Fremont and other noted Rocky-Mountain explorers, the hospitalities of the old fort. Many times were its soft walls indented by the arrows of besieging Indians, but its bloodiest tragedy was enacted in 1854, when the Utes surprised the sleeping company and savagely massacred all. While these events were transpiring at the old fort a party of Mexicans had journeyed from the south, crossed the Arkansas River and formed a settlement on the east side of the Fontaine. A characteristically squalid and miserable place it was, with the dwellings--they scarce deserved the name of houses--built in the side of the bluffs very much |
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