Kit Carson’s death occurred at Fort Lyon, Colorado, May twenty-third, 1869, the immediate cause being an aneurism of the aorta. Eight years before, Carson had sustained a bad fall, and had been dragged for a distance by his horse. From this hurt he never fully recovered. “Were it not for this,” said he, meaning his mishap, “I might live to be one hundred years of age.” Yet, knowing that he was doomed, he lived bravely and sweetly as ever, and to the end remained as unpretentious as during his early days. “It was wonderful,” says the chronicler who saw his last hours and who heard most of the biography of Kit Carson read in the presence of the hero himself, “it was wonderful to read of the thrilling deeds and narrow escapes of this man, and then look at the quiet, modest, retiring but dignified little man who had done so much. He was one of nature’s noblemen, a true man in all that constitutes manhood, pure, honorable, truthful and sincere, of noble impulses; a knight-errant, ever ready to defend the weak against the strong without reward other than his own conscience. His was a great contempt for noisy braggarts of every sort.” So, surrounded by his friends, facing the impending end with his customary bravery, Kit Carson passed away. There was a struggle and a fatal hemorrhage. “Doctor—compadre,—adios!” he cried. “This is the last of the general,” said his friend. So passed one of the last of the great Westerners. It was nearly time now for all the old mountain men to put up the rifle. The day of the plow was following hard upon them. ----- Footnote 28: Pray remember always this date of 1834. It is writ in few histories. It marks the closing scenes of the fur trade, the waning of the wild West, the beginning of the new day. In 1834 the preliminary survey of civilization had been practically completed. Footnote 29: One of Carson’s daughters, after a sad life story, is said to have died in New Mexico, in an insane asylum, in 1902. Footnote 30: V. Chapter III, Vol. III; Early Explorers of the Trans-Missouri. The Oregon trail was then a plain highway. Footnote 31: In spite of the Gallatin map, two years earlier. V. Chapter IV, Vol. III; “Early Explorers of the Trans-Missouri.” Footnote 32: The beginning of the New Mexican branch of the Long Trail, later to become famous in the cattle trade. CHAPTER II THE SANTA FÉ TRAIL