It was midsummer.  The smooth meadow upon which the encampment was held was rich, verdant and blooming, a beautiful stream flowing along its western border.  A fine grove fringed the stream as far as the eye could reach up and down.  Not a tree, stump, or stone was to be seen upon the smooth, lawn-like expanse.  Its edge, near the grove, was lined with a great variety of lodges, constructed of skins or bark, or of forest boughs.  Horses and mules in great numbers were feeding on the rich herbage, while groups of trappers, Canadians, Frenchmen, Americans and Indians, were scattered around, some cooking at their fires, some engaged in eager traffic, and some amusing themselves in athletic sports.  It was a peaceful scene, where, so far as the eye could discern, man’s fraternity was combined with nature’s loveliness to make this a happy world.  Such was the spectacle presented to the trappers as they descended into the valley.

On the other hand, the trappers themselves contributed a very important addition to the picturesqueness of the view.  Half a mile from the encampment, in the northeast, the land rose in a gentle, gradual swell, smooth, verdant and treeless, perhaps to the height of a hundred and fifty feet.  Down this declivity they were descending, with their horses and their pack mules, in a long line of single file.  They were way-worn pilgrims, and the grotesqueness of their attire, and their unshaven, uncut, and almost uncombed locks, added to their weird-like aspect.

Here the party met with two gentlemen, such as were rarely, perhaps never before, seen on such an occasion.  One was a Christian missionary, Father De Smidt, who, in obedience to the Saviour’s commission, “Go ye into all the world and preach my Gospel to every creature,” had abandoned the comforts of civilization, to cast in his lot with the savages, that he might teach them that religion of the Bible which would redeem the world by leading all men to repentance, to faith in an atoning Saviour, and to endeavor “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God.”

The other stranger was an English nobleman, a gentleman of high character, of refinement and culture.  In his ancestral home he had heard of the sublimities of the wilderness; the wide-spread prairies; the gloomy forests; the solitary lakes.  He had heard of savage men, numbering tens of thousands in their tribes, almost as wild, as devoid of human traits as were the buffaloes whom they pursued with whoop and halloo over the plains.  Curiosity, a very rational and praiseworthy curiosity, had lured him into these remote realms, that he might behold the wondrous works of God, and that he might study the condition of his brother man without the Gospel.

Kit Carson was, by a natural instinct, drawn into association with this refined English gentleman.  They could each appreciate the other.  They soon became acquainted, and a warm friendship sprang up between them.  Mr. Carson subsequently wrote, in reference to Sir William Stuart: