On one of the gorgeous days of the Indian summer, the encampment presented a spectacle of beauty which even to these rude men was enchanting. There was the distant, encircling outline of the Rocky mountains, many of the snow-capped peaks piercing the clouds. Scattered through the groves, which were free from underbrush, and whose surface was carpeted with the tufted grass, were seen the huts of the mountaineers in every variety of the picturesque, and even of the grotesque. Some were formed of the well tanned robes of the buffalo; some of boughs, twigs and bark; some of massive logs. Before all these huts, fires were burning at all times of the day, and food was being cooked and devoured by these ever-hungry men. Haunches of venison, prairie chickens, and trout from the stream, were emitting their savory odors, as they were turned on their spits before the glowing embers. The cattle, not even tethered, were grazing over the fertile plain. It was indeed a wild, weird-like, semi-barbaric Fair which was thus held in the very heart of the wilderness. Men of many nationalities were present, in every variety of grotesque costume; and not a few Indians were there, with scarcely any costume at all. For nearly two months the Fair continued, with comings and goings, while hill and plain often resounded with revelry. At length the festival was dissolved, and the mountaineers, breaking up into smaller bands, separated. The traders, with their horses loaded down with the furs, returned to the marts of civilization. The trappers again directed their steps to the solitudes of the remoter streams. Kit Carson joined a party of fifty men, to explore the highest tributaries of the Missouri river. The region was occupied by a numerous band of warlike Indians, called Blackfeet. Many of the warriors had obtained rifles. The itinerant trader could not refrain from furnishing the Indians with guns and ammunition, at the exorbitant prices which the savages were ready to pay. It shows the superiority of the white men, that fifty of them ventured to enter upon these plains and into these defiles, where thousands of these well-armed warriors were watching for their destruction.