The winter of 1838 and 1839, Mr. Ward says, was vividly impressed upon his mind, being his first experience as a trapper. After a journey of 600 miles from Independence, he arrived at Fort Bent, and early in the fall the different hunting and trapping parties started out for a long sojourn in the mountains. He was fortunate in being one of a party of twelve, of which Kit Carson was a member. They made headquarters in Brown's Hole, on the Colorado River, where it enters the mountains. Trapping proved hard work, but he never enjoyed life more, and knew no such thing as sickness. Their clothes were made (by their own hands) of buckskin. Their food was nothing but meat cooked on a stick or on the coals, as they had no cooking utensils. Antelope, deer, elk, bear, beaver, and, in case of necessity, even the wolf, furnished a variety that was always acceptable to eat. At night they gathered round a roaring fire, in comfortable quarters, to listen to the stories which such men as Kit Carson could tell. At the close of three months a successful trapper was often able to show a pack of 120 beaver skins, weighing about 100 pounds. As he made two trapping expeditions during the year, in the spring and fall, he would show 200 pounds, worth $6 per pound, as his year's work. In addition to this, the musk-stones of the beaver were worth as much as the skins, so that some of them made $3,000 per year as trappers. It was a poor trapper that did not earn half as much. But few of them ever saved any money. The traders from the States charged them enormously for supplies, and Western men were inveterate gamblers. Sugar was $1.50 per pound, coffee the same, tobacco $5 per pound, and a common shirt could not be bought for less than $5, while whisky sold for over $30 a gallon. With flour at $1 per pound, and luxuries in proportion, it was a question of but a few days at the rendezvous before the labor of months was used up. The traders were often called upon to fit out the men upon credit, after a prosperous season. CHAPTER XIV. TRAPPING. To be a successful trapper required great caution, as well as a perfect knowledge of the habits of the animals. The residence of the beaver was often discovered by seeing bits of green wood and gnawed branches of the basswood, slippery elm, and sycamore, their favorite food, floating on the water or lodged on the shores of the stream below, as well as by their tracks or foot-marks. These indications were technically called "beaver signs." They were also sometimes discovered by their dams thrown across creeks and small, sluggish streams, forming a pond in which were erected their habitations.