At times it was necessary to march long distances without meeting water.  One of these dreary stretches was eighty miles long.  It was necessary to pass over it as rapidly as possible, day and night almost without resting.  In accomplishing one of these arduous journeys across a desert almost as bare as that of Sahara, the party set out one afternoon at three o’clock.  One of the travellers writes: 

“I shall never forget the impression which that night’s journey left upon my mind.  Sometimes the trail led us over large basins of deep sand, where the trampling of the mules’ feet gave forth no sound.  This, added to the almost terrible silence which ever reigns in the solitude of the desert, rendered our transit more like the passage of some airy spectacle where the actors were shadows instead of men.  Nor is this comparison a strained one, for our way-worn voyagers, with their tangled locks and unshorn beards, rendered white as snow by the fine sand with which the air in these regions is often filled, had a weird and ghost-like look, which the gloomy scene around, with its frowning rocks and moonlit sands, tended to enhance and heighten.”

It is said, as illustrative of Kit’s promptness of action, that one night an inexperienced guard shouted “Indians.”  In an instant Kit was on his feet, pistol in hand.  A dark object was approaching him.  The loss of a second of time might enable a savage to bury his arrow-head deep in his side and to disappear in the darkness.  Like a flash of lightning Kit fired and shot his mule.  It was a false alarm.

The traders arrived safely in Santa Fe.  Kit Carson, having faithfully performed his contract, began to look around for new adventures.  Three hundred and fifty miles south of Santa Fe, there was the Mexican province of Chihuahua.  It was a very rich mining district, and many adventurers had flocked to it from Spain.  There was here a narrow valley of the Rio Grande about ten miles in extent, and quite well filled with the rude settlements of the miners.  It is said that at one time there were nearly seventy thousand Spaniards and Indians scattered along the river banks in search of the precious metals.

A trading party was bound from Santa Fe to this region.  Colonel Trammel was the leader of this party, and he eagerly secured the services of Kit Carson, who, in addition to his experience as a traveller, could also perform the functions of an interpreter.  We have no record of the incidents which occurred on this journey.  As the route was well known, and there were no hostile Indians to be encountered, it was probably uneventful.

In this valley of El Paso, as it was called, Carson found about five thousand people, mostly on the right bank of the river.  The rudeness of the style in which they lived painfully impressed him.  There was far more comfort in the cabins he had left in Missouri.

The houses were of clay baked in the sun, with earthen floors.  Window glass was a luxury unknown.  It seems almost incredible that they should have had neither chairs, tables, knives nor forks.  These Mexicans were scarcely one remove from the untamed savages of the wilderness.  Young Carson found nothing to interest him or to invite his stay.  He returned to Santa Fe.  The summer had now passed and another winter come.