Having with him a quantity of vaccine virus, he was able to barter skill in vaccinating the populace for liberty, though it was tardily and grudgingly granted.

He was able, at length, to get away from California, and returned, broken in health and penniless, by way of the City of Mexico, to his old home near Cincinnati, after six years of extraordinary travel through the wildest portions of the Rocky Mountain region and the extreme Southwest.
In the year 1826, an afterwards famous personage appeared in the valley of the Colorado, on the Gila branch, being no less than Kit Carson,* one of the greatest scouts and trappers of all.

At this time he was but seventeen years old, though in sagacity, knowledge, and skill soon the equal of any trapper in the field.

In 1827, Ewing Young, another noted trapper, having been driven away from the Gila by the natives, organised a company of forty men to go back and punish them, which meant to kill all they could see, innocent or guilty.

Carson was one of this party.
They succeeded in killing fifteen of the offenders, after which slight diversion they went on down the stream, trapping it as they went, but finally, running short of provisions, they had to eat horses.