Fork of the River Platte were descried.  Their practised eyes soon discovered the oft-noted “signs of the beaver.”  The camp was formed and the traps set.  The beaver, so long left to mind their own business, had increased in great numbers.  The hunt proved correspondingly successful.  The party continued working down this stream through the plains of Laramie to the New Park; and from thence, on to the Old Park.  We cannot follow them through this long and enlivening hunt.  They trapped a large number of their old streams until, finally, the expedition was terminated on the Arkansas River.  Throughout the whole course the hunt proved to be very successful.  With a large stock of furs they returned in safety to Rayado, via the Raton Mountains, which are spurs of the great Rocky chain.

The fact that most of the old trappers had given up their vocation furnishes the reason why the beaver were found, along the entire route, to be so plentiful.  We desire that the reader shall paint for himself the enjoyment which these men gathered in this renewal of a pursuit rendered congenial by the experience of long years of activity in following it.  It has been our purpose to enable the reader to gather a spark of this same enjoyment by the endeavor to make of him an amateur trapper.  He has followed Kit Carson throughout the trapping expeditions of his earlier life.  It is to be supposed that with Kit he has acquired some experience.  With Kit therefore he shall now receive his final polishing, and if he does not in the end catch a beaver, he shall at least learn how they are caught, and all the necessary minutiae of toil which he must expect to encounter and undergo.

On striking any river, when on the hunt, the trappers are accustomed to keep a bright lookout for signs, often heretofore referred to.  The word “signs” conveys but a vague idea of its all-important meaning, as it was received by the trappers.  The news of the presence of “signs” sent a thrill of joy through the hunters of the olden time only equalled on board of whale-ships when the man at the lookout cries “there she blows”.  It rarely happens that this cunning, amphibious animal can be seen moving free, either on the river banks, or in the water; for nature has given him no powerful weapons with which to defend himself when surprised and attacked; but, what is better, she has endowed him with exceedingly sensitive eyesight and hearing, which enables him to detect the approach of danger in time to escape.  The marks, however, which he leaves behind are, for a time, ineffaceable.  These were only to be detected and used for his own purposes, by the superior intellect of man.  The unequalled industry of gnawing down trees and cutting twigs, peeling off the tender cuticle of the willow bushes, digging away banks, and carrying on their shovel-shaped tails the earth, together with innumerable foot-prints and sometimes dams, were the items which filled up the catalogue of “signs” on which the