Fair in the Wilderness.—­The Encampment.—­Dispersion of the
    Trappers.—­Hostility of the Blackfeet.—­Camp on the Big Snake
    River.—­The Blackfeet Marauders.—­The Pursuit.—­The Calumet.—­The
    Battle.—­Kit Carson wounded.—­The Rencontre with Shunan.—­The
    Defeat and Humiliation of Shunan.—­Remarkable Modesty of
    Carson.—­Testimony to Mr. Carson’s Virtues.

In the morning the party fortunately found, in one of their traps, a beaver, upon whose not very palatable flesh they breakfasted.  The tail of a beaver when well cooked, is esteemed quite a delicacy.  But one tail would not furnish sufficient food for three men.  Fifteen days passed away before Kit Carson’s little band was reunited with the larger company of Messrs. Fitzpatrick and Bridger.  A rendezvous had been appointed at a spot on Green river, which afforded great attractions for an encampment.

In some unexplained way intelligence had been conveyed, through the wilderness, to the widely dispersed trappers, that a Fair for trading, would be held at a very commodious and well-known spot on the above-mentioned stream.  There was here a green, smooth, expanded meadow; the pasturage was rich; a clear mountain stream rippled through it, fringed by noble forest trees.  The vicinity afforded an abundance of game.  Here they reared their camps and built their roaring fires.  Band after band of trappers and traders came in with loud huzzas.  Within a few days between two and three hundred men were assembled there, with five or six hundred horses or mules.

On one of the gorgeous days of the Indian summer, the encampment presented a spectacle of beauty which even to these rude men was enchanting.  There was the distant, encircling outline of the Rocky mountains, many of the snow-capped peaks piercing the clouds.  Scattered through the groves, which were free from underbrush, and whose surface was carpeted with the tufted grass, were seen the huts of the mountaineers in every variety of the picturesque, and even of the grotesque.  Some were formed of the well tanned robes of the buffalo; some of boughs, twigs and bark; some of massive logs.  Before all these huts, fires were burning at all times of the day, and food was being cooked and devoured by these ever-hungry men.  Haunches of venison, prairie chickens, and trout from the stream, were emitting their savory odors, as they were turned on their spits before the glowing embers.

The cattle, not even tethered, were grazing over the fertile plain.  It was indeed a wild, weird-like, semi-barbaric Fair which was thus held in the very heart of the wilderness.  Men of many nationalities were present, in every variety of grotesque costume; and not a few Indians were there, with scarcely any costume at all.  For nearly two months the Fair continued, with comings and goings, while hill and plain often resounded with revelry.

At length the festival was dissolved, and the mountaineers, breaking up into smaller bands, separated.  The traders, with their horses loaded down with the furs, returned to the marts of civilization.  The trappers again directed their steps to the solitudes of the remoter streams.