Note (return) — Chapter IV
Reading edition
"He" (Christopher Carson) "is a remarkably peaceable and quiet man, temperate in his habits, and strictly moral in his deportment. In a letter written from California, in 1847, introducing Carson as the bearer of dispatches to the government, Col. Fremont says: 'with me, Carson and truth mean the same thing. He is always the same—gallant and disinterested.' He is kind-hearted, and averse to all quarrelsome and turbulent scenes, and has never been engaged in any mere personal broils or encounters, except on one single occasion, which he sometimes modestly describes to his friends. The narrative is fully confirmed by an eye-witness, of whose presence at the time he was not aware, and whose account he has probably never seen or heard of. I shall tell the story as it is gathered from them both.9