"I have brought out a few more softening traits in the characters of the mountaineers--but not at the sacrifice of truth--for some of them have their good points; which, as they are rarely allowed to rise to the surface, must be laid hold of at once, before they sink again. Killbuck--that 'old hos' _par exemple_, was really pretty much of a gentleman, as was La Bonté. Bill Williams, another 'hard case,' and Rube Herring, were 'some' too. "The scene where La Bonté joins the Chase family is so far true that he did make a sudden appearance; but, in reality, a day before the Indian attack. The Chases (and I wish I had not given the proper name[7]) did start for the Platte alone, and were stampedoed upon the waters of the Platte. "The Mexican fandango _is true to the letter_. It does seem difficult to understand how they contrived to keep their knives out of the hump-ribs of the mountaineers; but how can you account for the fact that, the other day, 4000 Mexicans, with 13 pieces of artillery, behind strong intrenchments and two lines of parapets, were routed by 900 raw Missourians; 300 killed, as many more wounded, all their artillery captured, as well as several hundred prisoners; and that not one American was killed in the affair? _This is positive fact._ "I myself, with three trappers, cleared a fandango at Taos, armed only with bowie-knives--some score Mexicans, at least, being in the room. "With regard to the incidents of Indian attacks, starvation, cannibalism, &c., I have invented not one out of my own head. They are all matters of history in the mountains; but I have, no doubt, jumbled the _dramatis personæ_ one with another, and may have committed anachronisms in the order of their occurrence." Again he wrote to us as follows:-- "I think it would be as well to correct a misapprehension as to the truth or fiction of the paper. It is _no fiction_. There is no incident in it which has not actually occurred, nor one character who is not well known in the Rocky Mountains, with the exception of two whose names are changed--the originals of these being, however, equally well known with the others." His last letter, written just before his departure from England, a few weeks previously to his death, will hardly be read by any who ever knew the writer, without a tear of sympathy with the sad fate of this fine young man, dying miserably in a strange land, before he had well commenced the adventurous journey whose excitement and dangers he so joyously anticipated:--