Perhaps there is no tribe of Indians besides the Seminoles in Florida, that have given the United States more trouble than the Apaches, in the time that we have held the claim of their country; and the best proof of their bravery may be found in the fact that the warriors nearly all die in battle. Living in a country as healthy as any in the world, and constantly occupied in hunting buffalo, or Mexicans and whites, with whom they are at war, they are exceedingly regardful of their national honor, and as their mountain retreats are almost inaccessible, they have the advantage of regular troops, and almost of old mountaineers, only as the latter can equal them in numbers. Col. Beale was occupying this department at the time of which we write, and engaged in an effort to chastise the Apaches under _Clico Velasquez_, their exceedingly blood-thirsty and cruel chief, whose habit was to adorn his dress with the finger bones of the victims he had slaughtered. Col. Beale took charge of the command himself, and employed Carson as his guide. They crossed snow mountains to search for the Indians, and returning came upon a village, which they attacked, and captured a large amount of goods and two of the chiefs of the tribe, with whom Col. Beale had a long talk, and then dismissed to return to their tribe, hoping thus to convince them of the magnanimity of the United States Government, when the command returned to Taos to recruit his troops. Meantime Carson entertained, at his own home in Taos, Fremont and his party of suffering explorers, who were making a winter survey of a pass for a road to California, and by taking a difficult mountain pass, had lost all their mules and several of their party. Science is not all that is needed for such undertakings, and as labor and learning should act in co-partnership, to be most effective, so theoretic and practical skill should be associated in any effort of difficulty, as this trip of Col. Fremont, without an experienced mountaineer for a guide, proved to him and his men, some of whom had fed upon the others who had starved. CHAPTER XXXI. In the last chapter, we left Fremont in the hospitable mansion of his old and tried friend Carson, after one of the most extraordinary journeys ever performed by any man who survived to tell its horrors; and as the names of Carson and Fremont are inseparably cemented in history, as in friendship, and as the former had often endured sufferings almost as great as those of his old commander and friend, we shall be pardoned if we allude to this journey at some length. There is no earthly doubt that had Carson been the guide, many valuable lives of noble, glorious men might have been spared, and sufferings on the part of those who survived this disastrous expedition, almost too horrible for belief, avoided.