"Entering upon his life work at the age of seventeen, choosing now to think for himself, nor follow the lead of those who would detain him in a quiet life, while he felt the restless fire 'in his bones,' that forbade his burying his energy in merely mechanical toil, he had yet been directed in his choice, by the fitness for it the pursuits of youth had given, and spurning the humdrum monotony of the shop, gave himself entirely to what would most aid him in attaining the profession he had chosen. We must admire such spirit in a youth, for it augurs well for the energy and will power of the manhood; therefore, when the biographer says of Christopher Carson, that the neighbors who knew him, predicted an uncommon life in the child with whom they hunted, and conceded to him positions, as well as privileges, that were not accorded to common men, with his life till thirty-three before us, we feel that he has fulfilled the hope of early promise, with a noble manhood." We have followed Carson's pathway, without much of detail, to the localities where he practised the profession he had chosen, until we saw him leave it because it ceased longer to afford compensation for his toil, and during as long a period we have written of his quiet pursuit of the, to him, pleasant, but laborious life of a hunter; unless we must class the latter eight years with the former, and assume each as a part of the profession he had chosen. In all, with perhaps the exception of a few weeks at Santa Fe, when still in his minority, we have found him ever strong to resist the thousand temptations to evil with which his pathway was beset, and which drew other men away. Strong ever in the maintenance of the integrity of his manhood, even when the convivial circle and the game had a brief fascination for him, they taught him the lesson which he needed to learn, that only by earnest resistance, can evil be overcome; and thus he was enabled to admonish others against those temptations which had once overcome even his powers of resistance; and so he learned to school himself to the idea, that good comes ever through the temptation to evil to all those who have the courage to extract it. We have followed him up and down all the streams of our great central western wilds, and indicated the store of geographic knowledge which he had acquired by hard experience before they were known so far to any one besides; and then for eight years more we have seen that this knowledge was digested and reviewed in the social circle with other mountain trappers, and beside the lonely mountain river, and 'neath the wild, steep cliff; or on the grassy bottom, or the barren plain, and in the less sterile places where the sage hen found a covert, and up among the oak openings, and in the gigantic parks, where, as a hunter, he revisited old haunts.