In reviewing the life of Christopher Carson, another of our Western leaders in exploration, we come upon the transition period between the time of up-stream transportation and that which led across the waters; the epoch wherein fell the closing days of Western adventure properly so called, and the opening days of a Western civilization fitly so named. Kit Carson, as he was always called, was born in Madison County, Kentucky, on December twenty-fourth, 1809. Thus it may be seen that his time lapped over that of Crockett and even of Boone. It is not generally known, yet it is the case, that Kit Carson was a grandson of Daniel Boone. Carson’s life, therefore, rounds out the time of the great Westerners. He comes down to the railroad-building day. His was the time of the long-haired men of the American West. John Colter, Jim Bridger, Bill Williams, the mulatto Beckwith or Beckworth; the great generals of the fur trade, Lisa, Ashley, Henry, Smith, Sublette, Fitzpatrick, all that company of the great captains of hazard—these were the men of his day; and among them all, not one has come down to us in more distinct figure or with memory carrying greater respect. We call Frémont “The Great Pathfinder,” and credit him with the exploration of the Rockies, the Pacific slope, and the great tramontane interior basins. Yet Frémont did not begin his explorations until 1842, and by that time the West of the adventurers was practically an outlived thing. For ten years the fur trade had been virtually defunct. For more than a decade the early commerce of the prairies had been waning. The West had been tramped across from one end to the other by a race of men peerless in their daring, chief among whom might be named this little, gentle, blue-eyed man, of whom that genially supercilious and generally ignorant biographer, J. S. C. Abbott, is good enough to write: “It is strange that the wilderness could have formed so estimable a character!” This little man—he is described by one who knew him as a small man, not over five feet six inches in height—had, long before he ever heard of Frémont, ridden and walked along every important stream of the Rocky Mountains; had journeyed across the “American Desert” a dozen times, back and forth; had seen every foot of the Rockies from the Forks of the Missouri to the Bayou Salade; had seen all of New Mexico; had visited old Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California as we now know them; had camped at every resting ground along the Arkansas and Platte; had fought and traded with every Indian tribe from the Apaches up through the Navajos, Cheyennes, Comanches, Sioux, and Crows; had even fought the Blackfeet, redoubtable Northern warriors.