It would be but wearying to go on with the monotonous chronicle of repeated journeys back and forth, of hardships, of toils and dangers, of the round of the trapper's employment, of the wild life at those wild, strange annual markets of the mountains, the trappers' rendezvous. It will suffice us and serve us to remember that Carson practically closed his life as a trapper in 1834,[28] this date marking the end of eight years steadily employed by him in trapping and trading and in learning the West. In 1834 he and such companions as Bill Williams, William New, Mitchell, Frederick, and scores of others of his old-time friends, found themselves practically without a calling. When, after one long expedition west of the range, they readied Fort Roubidoux, it was only to discover that furs had gone very low in price.
The advent of the silk hat had caused terror in St. Louis, and gloom throughout the Rockies. The day of the beaver trade was at an end. That animal, of so monstrous an importance in the history of the American continent, was now to assume a place far lower in estimation. Our bold, befringed mountaineers learned that it would no longer pay to pursue it into the remote fastnesses of the Rocky Mountains. Yet the beaver had served its purpose. Following its tooth-marks on the trees, there had pressed on to the head of every Western river a man qualifying for office as guide of the west-bound civilization beyond the Missouri. Kit Carson, type of the graduated trapper and adventurer, had had his schooling.
Yet a man must live, and if there be no price for beaver peltry he must turn his hand to something else for occupation. For eight years Kit Carson served as hunter for the post, well-known as Bent's Fort, on the Arkansas River. There he fed forty men on the wild meat of the plains, and during his eight years of hunting killed thousands of buffalo, elk, and deer. He saw the plains in all their ancient undimmed splendor, and whether he most loved the mountains or the plains he himself never could tell. Carson at an earlier time had married an Indian girl, and during his engagement at Fort Bent he sent his one child, a daughter, to St. Louis for the purpose of acquiring an education. There the daughter married, went to California, and apparently passes from the scene. Carson's later marriage was with a Mexican woman very much younger than himself.[29]