prairie in the
autumn. See! I have pulled down my white houses, and my people are ready.
When the sun is ten paces higher, we shall be on the march."

They left the fort on the twenty-second of July, and followed up the north
fork of the Platte for three weeks, encountering no molestation from the
Indians, and meeting only with the ordinary hardships to be expected in
travelling through the wilderness. They generally found a sufficiency of
water, of grazing and of game. They at length found themselves among the
wildest ravines of the Rocky mountains. Here they employed themselves day
after day in astronomical and geological observations, and then commenced
their return. All the objects of their expedition had been successfully
accomplished. They reached Fort Laramie early in September. Kit Carson's
labors were now ended. He had joined the expedition as hunter and guide.
In neither of these offices were his services any longer required. He
therefore remained at the fort, while the surveying party returned to St.
Louis.

Mr. Carson's Indian wife had long been dead. Four months after this, in
February, he married a Mexican lady, named Senora Josepha Jarimilla. This
lady was highly esteemed by all who knew her for her many virtues, and was
also endowed with much personal beauty. She subsequently became the mother
of three children, for whom Mr. Carson has ever manifested the strongest
attachment.

Two months after his marriage he engaged as a hunter to accompany an
expedition of Messrs. Bent and Vrain's wagons to the United States. When
about half-way across the plains, they struck the great Santa Fe trail.
Here Carson and his companions came upon an encampment of Captain Cook,
with four companies of U.S. Dragoons. They were escorting a train of
Mexican wagons, as far as the boundary line between the United States and
New Mexico. The region was infested with robber bands and it was deemed
important that the richly freighted caravan should not encounter harm
within the limits of the United States.

The Mexicans, were apprehensive that, as soon as they should separate from
their American protectors, they should be attacked upon entering Texas, by
a large body of Texan Rangers, who, it was reported, were waiting for
them. They therefore offered Kit Carson, with whose energetic character
they were well acquainted, three hundred dollars, if he would carry a
letter to Armijo the governor of New Mexico, who resided at Santa Fe