Mr. Young and his party trapped down the Colorado and up the Gila with success, then crossed to the vicinity of the New Mexican copper mines, where they left their furs and went to Santa Fe. Having procured there license to trade with the Indians about the copper mines, they returned thither for their furs, went back to Santa Fe and disposed of them to great advantage. The party disbanded with several hundred dollars apiece, which most of them expended as sailors do their earnings when they come into port. Of course Carson was hail fellow well met with them for a time. He had not hitherto taken the lesson that all have to learn, viz., that the ways of pleasure are deceitful paths; and to resist temptation needs a large amount of courage--larger perhaps than to encounter any physical danger; at least the moral courage it requires is of a higher tone than the physical courage which would carry one through a fight with a grizzly bear triumphantly; that the latter assists the former; indeed that the highest moral courage must be aided by physical bravery, but that the latter may exist entirely independently of the former. Carson learned during this season of hilarity the necessity of saying No! and he did so persistently, knowing that if he failed in this he would be lost to himself and to everything dear in life. He was now twenty-one, and though the terrible ordeal of poverty had been nobly borne, and he had conquered, the latter ordeal of temptation from the sudden possession of what was to him a large sum of money, had proved for once, too much. And it is well for him perhaps it was so; as it enabled him to sow his wild oats in early youth. It is not improbable that some of this party belonged to the class of Canadians called _coureurs des bois_, whose habits Mr. Irving thus describes in his Astoria: "A new and anomalous class of men gradually grew out of this trade. These were called _coureurs des bois_, rangers of the woods; originally men who had accompanied the Indians in their hunting expeditions, and made themselves acquainted with remote tracts and tribes; and who now became, as it were, pedlers of the wilderness. These men would set out from Montreal with canoes well stocked with goods, with arms and ammunition, and would make their way up the mazy and wandering rivers that interlace the vast forests of the Canadas, coasting the most remote lakes, and creating new wants and habitudes among the natives. Sometimes they sojourned for months among them, assimilating to their tastes and habits with the happy facility of Frenchmen; adopting in some degree the Indian dress, and not unfrequently taking to themselves Indian wives.