Carson, Christopher C., a famous guide, scout and frontiersman in the early settlement of the West, is better known to the readers of American history as "Kit" Carson. He was born in Madison county, Ky., Dec. 24, 1809, but while he was still in his infancy his parents removed to Howard county, Mo. At the age of fifteen years he was apprenticed to a saddler, but two years later he joined an overland trading expedition to Santa Fe. This determined the course of his career. He was an expert with the rifle and the wild life of the plains had a fascination for him that he could not shake off. He married an Indian woman and for sixteen years supplied his food with his rifle. Eight years of that time he was in the employ of Bent and St. Vrain, who engaged him to furnish meat to their forts. In 1842, after the death of his wife, he went to St. Louis to place his daughter in school and there met Col. John C. Fremont, who was fitting out his first exploring expedition to the Rocky mountains. Carson was engaged to act as guide to the expedition, and he was also with Fremont on his second expedition and in the conquest of California. In 1847 he was sent to Washington as a bearer of despatches and President Polk nominated him as lieutenant in the United States mounted rifles, but the senate refused to confirm the nomination. In the meantime Carson had married a Spanish woman of New Mexico in 1843, and in 1853 he drove a flock of some 6,500 sheep over the mountains to California, where he sold them at prices that repaid him well for the venture. During the Civil war he was loyal to the Federal government and rendered valuable services in New Mexico, Colorado and the Indian Territory, being brevetted brigadier-general at the close of the war. Many of Carson's exploits were along the line of the old Santa Fe trail in Kansas and New Mexico, and he has been called the "Nestor of the Rocky mountains." Inman says of him: "He was brave but not reckless; a veritable exponent of Christian altruism, and as true to his friends as the needle to the pole. Under the average in stature, and delicate in his physical proportions, he was nevertheless a quick, wiry man, with nerves of steel, and possessing an indomitable will. He was full of caution, but showed coolness in the moment of supreme danger that was good to witness." Carson died at Fort Lyon, Col., May 23, 1868.