Life of Kit Carson, the Great Western Hunter and Guide. Charles Burdett

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СКАЧАТЬ hill he sees one, with a cub following her; but game is plenty, and deer is good enough food for her. On, on he goes at slow pace, for he has a delicate charge, and already is she restive from very weariness, though his pace is slow.

      Half his journey is completed as the gray of dawn and the twinkle of the star of morning relieves the tedium and anxiety of his loneliness. He has made the circuit of the bay. The river is before him as he descends the hill which he has ascended for observation. Morning broadens. The flowers glow with variegated beauty as he tramples them, and in some patches the odor of the crushed dewy beauties fills the air to satiety.

      A few miles more of travel and he crosses the river, and is again in the river-bottom where the party have taken the beaver. He stops at an Indian village, and dines from the liberal haunch and the acorn bread the chief presents, and with good feelings displayed on either side, takes in his arms a young papoose, the digger's picaninny, and salutes it with a kiss. Kit leaves there a trifling, but to them, valuable memorial of his visit, mounts his sorrel which is restive under the slow gait to which he has restrained him, takes the rope again which secures his treasure, the cow, and plods towards home at evening. The camp fire smokes in the distance, while the few horses that remain are staked about, and the sentinel paces up and down to keep off the drowsiness induced by fatigue and a hearty meat supper. The eastern and the western horizon are lighted with pale silver by the departing god of day, and the approaching goddess of the night, and the still river divides the plain, bounded only by the horizon, except he look behind him. Such is the scene as, approaching, the sentinel raises his gun and gives the challenge to halt. But the rest of the camp are not yet sleeping, and a dozen voices shout in the still evening a glad welcome to Carson, for whom they were not concerned, for they well knew there was not one of the party so well able to take care of himself as he.

      CHAPTER VI

      Peters, in his "Life of Carson," tells the story of two expeditions which Carson led against the Indians, while they trapped upon the Sacramento, which give proof of his courage, and thorough education in the art of Indian warfare, which had become a necessity to the voyageur on the plains, and in the mountains of the western wilds. With his quick discrimination of character, and familiarity with the habits of the race, he could not but know the diggers were less bold than the Apaches and Camanches, with whom he was before familiar.

      The Indians at the Mission San Gabriel, were restive under coerced labor, and forty of them made their escape to a tribe not far away.

      The mission demanded the return of these fugitives, and being refused, gave battle to the neighboring tribe, but were defeated. The Padre sent to the trappers for assistance to compel the Indians not to harbor their people. Carson and eleven of his companions volunteered to aid the mission, and the attack upon the Indian village resulted in the destruction of a third of its inhabitants, and compelled them to submission. Capt. Young found at this mission a trader to take his furs, and from them purchased a drove of horses. Directly after his return, a party of Indians contrived to drive away sixty horses from the trappers, while the sentinel slept at night. Carson with twelve men were sent in pursuit. It was not difficult to follow the fresh trail of so large a drove, yet he pursued them a hundred miles, and into the mountains, before coming up with them. The Indians supposed themselves too far away to be followed, and were feasting on the flesh of the stolen horses they had slaughtered. Carson's party arranged themselves silently and without being seen, and rushing upon the Indian camp, killed eight men, and scattered the remainder in every direction. The horses were recovered, except the six killed, and partly consumed, and with three Indian children left in camp, they returned to the joyful greetings of their friends.

      Early in the autumn of 1829, Mr. Young and his party of trappers set out on their return home. On their route they visited Los Angelos, formerly called Pueblo de los Angelos, "the city of the angels," a name which it received on account of the exceedingly genial climate, and the beauty of the surrounding country. It is situated on a small river of the same name, 30 miles from its mouth, and on the road between the cities of San Jose and San Diego. It is about three hundred and fifty miles east of San Francisco, and a hundred miles to the south.

      Although to very many thousands of readers, anything on the subject of the climate of California may seem superfluous, yet there are as many thousands who have no really distinct idea of the country or the climate, and we therefore quote from Rev. Dr. Bushnell, whose article on those topics in the "New Englander," in 1858, attracted justly such universal attention:

      "The first and most difficult thing to apprehend respecting California is the climate, upon which, of course, depend the advantages of health and physical development, the growths and their conditions and kinds, and the modus operandi, or general cast, of the seasons. But this, again, is scarcely possible, without dismissing, first of all, the word climate, and substituting the plural, climates. For it cannot be said of California, as of New England, or the Middle States, that it has a climate. On the contrary, it has a great multitude, curiously pitched together, at short distances, one from another, defying too, not seldom, our most accepted notions of the effects of latitude and altitude and the defences of mountain ranges. The only way, therefore, is to dismiss generalities, cease to look for a climate, and find, if we can, by what process the combinations and varieties are made; for when we get hold of the manner and going on of causes, all the varieties are easily reducible.

      "To make this matter intelligible, conceive that Middle California, the region of which we now speak, lying between the head waters of the two great rivers, and about four hundred and fifty or five hundred miles long from north to south, is divided lengthwise, parallel to the coast, into three strips, or ribands of about equal width. First, the coast-wise region, comprising two, three, and sometimes four parallel tiers of mountains from five hundred to four thousand, five thousand, or even ten thousand feet high. Next, advancing inward, we have a middle strip, from fifty to seventy miles wide, of almost dead plain, which is called the great valley; down the scarcely perceptible slopes of which, from north to south, and south to north, run the two great rivers, the Sacramento and the San Joaquim, to join their waters at the middle of the basin and pass off to the sea. The third long strip, or riband, is the slope of the Sierra Nevada chain, which bounds the great valley on the east, and contains in its foot-hills, or rather in its lower half, all the gold mines. The upper half is, to a great extent, bare granite rock, and is crowned at the summit, with snow, about eight months of the year.

      "Now the climate of these parallel strips will be different almost of course, and subordinate, local differences, quite as remarkable, will result from subordinate features in the local configurations, particularly of the seaward strip or portion. For all the varieties of climate, distinct as they become, are made by variations wrought in the rates of motion, the courses, the temperature, and the dryness of a single wind; viz., the trade wind of the summer months, which blows directly inward all the time, only with much greater power during that part of the day when the rarefaction of the great central valley comes to its aid; that is, from about ten o'clock in the morning, to the setting of the sun. Conceive such a wind, chilled by the cold waters that have come down from the Northern Pacific, perhaps from Behring's Straits, combing the tops and wheeling round through the valleys of the coastwise mountains, crossing the great valley at a much retarded rate, and growing hot and dry, fanning gently the foot-hills and sides of the Sierra, still more retarded by the piling necessary to break over into Utah, and the conditions of the California climate, or climates, will be understood with general accuracy. Greater simplicity in the matter of climate is impossible, and greater variety is hardly to be imagined.

      "For the whole dry season, viz., from May to November, this wind is in regular blast, day by day, only sometimes approaching a little more nearly to a tempest than at others. It never brings a drop of rain, however thick and rain-like the clouds it sometimes drives before it. The cloud element, indeed, is always in it. Sometimes it is floated above, in the manner commonly designated by the term cloud. Sometimes, as in the early morning, when the wind is most quiet, it may be seen as a kind of fog bank resting on the sea-wall mountains or rolling down landward through the interstices of their summits. When СКАЧАТЬ