it is at this day. Where, then, were the published guides? Where were
the charts indicating the eligible camping grounds with their springs
of pure water? These _oases_ of the American Sahara were not yet
acquainted with the white man's foot. The herds of buffaloes, the
droves of wild horses, knew not the crack of the white man's rifle.
They had fled only at the approach of the native Indian warrior and
the yearly fires of the prairie. It was a difficult task to find a man
who had gazed on the lofty peaks of the mountain ranges which formed a
serpentine division of the vast American Territories, or who had drank
the waters at the camping places on the prairies. The traveller
at that day was, in every force of meaning which the word extends,
literally, an explorer, whose chosen object was the task of a hero.
The Indians themselves could give no information of the route beyond
the confined limits of their hunting ranges. The path which this
pioneer party entered was existent only in the imagination of the
book-making geographer, about as accurate and useful from its detail,
as the route of Baron Munchausen to the icelands of the North Pole on
the back of his eagle. The whole expanse of the rolling prairie, to
those brave hearts, was one boundless uncertainty. This language may
possibly be pronounced redundant. It may be in phrase; it is not in
fact. The carpet-knight, the holiday ranger, the book-worm explorer,
knows but little of the herculean work which has furnished for the
world a practical knowledge of the western half of the North American
continent. We shall see in the progress of this work whether the
adventures of Kit Carson entitle him to a place in the heart of the
American nation on the same shelf with his compeers.

In that day, the fierce red-man chief scoured the broad prairies, a
petty king in his tribe, a ruler of his wild domain. Bold, haughty,
cautious, wily, unrelenting, revengeful, he led his impassioned