[Footnote 10:  We give the name which was applied to this river at the date of the facts related in the text.  It is now called the Humboldt River.]

To a man not accustomed to this kind of meat, mule flesh and horse flesh would not be likely to prove over tempting or appropriate viands.  Let him feel the pangs of hunger very sharply, and his ideas of lusciousness and propriety in respect to food will rapidly change.  The civilized world has condemned the practice as belonging to barbarians.  A mountaineer, not being quite so fastidious, scouts these ideas, considering them foolish prejudices of people who have never been forced by necessity to test the wisdom of their condemnation.  Let the epicurean sages have their choice, eat horse flesh or starve, and, they confidently maintain, horse flesh would gradually grow to be considered a dainty, the rarer over beef, in proportion to its greater cost.

The trappers of the western prairies, who wander thousands of miles over barren as well as fertile lands, where game cannot exist from stern necessity, are compelled to submit to all kinds of vicissitudes; but, with buoyant spirits, they conquer results, which, a faint heart and yielding courage would behold almost in their grasp but fail to reach.

An emergency calls forth skill and great energies; and, in an unexplored country where, as in the case here recorded, everything living suddenly disappears, it is then that the wits of a trapper save his life when an ordinary traveler would lie down and die.

Kit Carson and his men, at last, succeeded in reaching Fort Hall.  They were kindly received and amply provided for by the whites who then occupied it as a trading post.  Here they rapidly recruited their strength, and in the course of a few days felt able to start out upon a buffalo hunt.  Reports had come in that large numbers of buffalo existed in close proximity to the Fort.  Kit Carson and his men were not the kind who live upon the bounty of others when game can be had in return for the necessary effort to find.  They were also not the men to hoard their stock of provisions whenever they met parties in distress.  The first query which different bands of trappers offer to each other on meeting in the wilderness, is, “Does game exist in plenty,” or “is game plenty in such and such sections of country?” This takes precedence over the commonplace question, “What’s the news?” Oftentimes, when venturing into distant and unexplored districts of territory they were obliged to take their chances of finding sustenance; but, they hardly ever neglected an opportunity to inform themselves on the subject:  on the contrary, they often sacrificed both time and profits in order to secure correct details.  Any other course would have been fool-hardy rashness, just fit for parties of over-bold inexperience to take the consequences of.