With this party, Lieutenant Fremont was ascending the river four hundred miles, to the mouth of the Kansas, from which point he was to take his departure through the unexplored wilderness. We say unexplored, though many portions of it had been visited by wandering bands of unlettered trappers and hunters. Lieutenant Fremont had been disappointed in obtaining the guide he had expected. Upon learning this fact, Mr. Carson retired to a secluded part of the boat, sat down, and for some time seemed lost in reverie. Then rising and approaching Lieutenant Fremont he modestly said to him, "Sir, I have been for some time in the mountains, and think I can guide you to any point there you may wish to reach." The office of a guide, through thousands of miles of untroden wilderness, was a very responsible position. Mr. Carson was an entire stranger to Lieutenant Fremont. But there was something in his bearing which inspired confidence. After making a few inquiries of others, Mr. Carson was engaged to act as guide with a salary of one hundred dollars a month. The expedition commenced its march from near the mouth of the Kansas on the 10th of June 1842. It followed along the banks of that stream, in a westerly direction. The whole party consisted of twenty-eight souls. They were well armed and were well mounted with the exception of eight men, who drove as many carts. These carts were each drawn by two mules and were packed with the stores of the party, their baggage and their instruments. There were a number of loose horses in the train to supply the place of any, which might be disabled by the way. There were also four oxen, which were added as a contribution to their stock of provisions, one may well imagine that so numerous a cavalcade, winding its way over the undulating and treeless prairie, would present a very imposing aspect. An Indian guide conducted them for the first forty miles, along the river banks, with which Mr. Carson was not familiar. He then left them and they entered upon that vast ocean of prairie which extended, with scarcely any interruption, to the base of the Rocky mountains. The borders of nearly all these western streams are fringed with a narrow belt of forest. Here where there was abundance of water, the richest of soil, which needed but to be "tickled with a hoe to laugh with a harvest," and where there was an ample supply of timber for building and for fuel, they found many good-looking Indian farms with Indians riding about in their picturesque costumes.