a manner which
won the warmest praise of those with him. He was unquestionably daring,
skilful and sagacious, and was certain, if his life was spared, to
become one of the most valuable members of the party.

Having driven the savages away, the Americans began or rather resumed
their regular business of trapping. The beavers were so abundant that
they met with great success. When the rodents seemed to diminish in
number, the hunters shifted their quarters, pursuing their profession
along the numerous streams until it was decided to divide into two
parties, one of which returned to New Mexico, while the other pushed
on toward the Sacramento Valley in California. Carson accompanied the
latter, entering the region at that early day when no white man dreamed
of the vast wealth of gold and precious metals which so crowded her soil
and river beds that the wonder is the gleaming particles had not been
detected many years before; but, as the reader knows, they lay quietly
at rest until that eventful day in 1848, when the secret was revealed by
Captain Sutter's raceway and the frantic multitudes flocked thither from
the four quarters of the earth.

CHAPTER II.

California--Sufferings of the Hunters--The Mission of San Gabriel--The
Hudson Bay Trappers--Characteristics of Carson--He Leads the Party which
Captures an Indian Village and Secures some Criminals.

California, one of the most magnificent regions of the earth, with its
amazing mineral wealth, its rich soil and "glorious climate," has its
belts of sterility and desolation, where the bones of many a traveller
and animal lie bleaching in the sun, just as they fell years ago, when
the wretched victim sank down and perished for want of food and water.

The hunting party to which Carson was attached numbered eighteen,
and they entered one of those forbidding wastes, where they suffered
intensely. All their skill in the use of the rifle was of no avail, when
there was no game to shoot and it was not long before they were forced
to live on horse flesh to escape starvation. This, however, was not so
trying as might be supposed, provided it did not last until the entire
party were dismounted.

Fortunately, in their straits, they encountered a party of Mohave
Indians, who sold them enough food to remove all danger. These Indians
form a part of the Yuma nation of the Pima family, and now make their
home on the Mohave and Colorado rivers in Arizona. They are tall, wel