But Carson was too valuable an aid to be long allowed to be idle. In March, 1847, he was ordered to be the bearer of important dispatches to the War Department at Washington, and Lieutenant Beale was directed to accompany him with dispatches for the Department of the Navy. The latter was still so much an invalid as to require Carson to lift him on and off his horse for the first twenty days of the journey, but Carson's genial spirits and kindly care, with the healthful exercise of horsemanship, recovered him rapidly; and the country was so well known to Carson, that they avoided collisions with the Indians by eluding their haunts; except once upon the Gila, when they were attacked in the night, and a shower of arrows sent among them as they lay in camp, from which his men had escaped, being injured by holding their pack-saddles before them. They stopped briefly at Taos, and pursued their journey so rapidly that the two thousand five hundred miles on horseback, and the fifteen hundred by railroad, were accomplished in less than three months. The incidents of such a journey had become every-day scenes to Carson, so that their narration would seem to him a waste of words on the part of his biographer. And yet the emotions with which he witnessed, for the first time, the monument of advancing civilization in the Eastern cities, and the zest with which he enjoyed the social comforts of the hospitality afforded him at the homes of Lieutenant Beale and Col. Benton, can be better imagined than described. He had taken but a small supply of provisions from Los Angelos, lest it should be cumbersome to him, and as the road lay often through a country destitute of game, there had been fasting on the way, sometimes days together; but his party, which he had selected, making their ability to endure such an enterprise a leading quality of commendation to him, bore all without a murmur; stimulated by the one impulse, of reaching their homes and friends, while Carson cared to secure the approbation of those whom he served, and the consciousness of having been an honor to his country. Col. Benton met him at St. Louis, and reaching Washington, Mrs. Fremont was at the depot to take him to her's and her father's home. She waited for no introduction, but at once approached him, calling him by name, and telling him she should have known him from her husband's description. After a brief tarry in Washington, a lion himself and introduced to all the lions, he departed with Lieutenant Beale for St. Louis, but business detained the latter who went later by sea; while Carson, whom President Polk had made a Lieutenant in the army, with fifty troops under his command to take through the Camanche country, again commenced his journey across the prairies, having a battle with these Indians as was expected, for they were at war with the whites.