of elk, the skins
of which they dressed for clothing. They had made the first extended
trip on record along the Grand Canyon and the other canyons of the
Colorado, but whether they passed up by the north or the south I am
unable to determine. My impression is that they passed by the north, as
they would otherwise have met with the Havasupai in their Canyon, with
the Little Colorado, and with the Moki. They would also have struck the
San Juan, but the first stream mentioned as coming in is from the north,
which they reached three days after arriving at the place where they
could get to the water. Three days after leaving this they met a large
body of Shoshones. They appear now to be somewhere on Grand River. They
had a brush with the Shoshones, whom they defeated, and then compelled
the women to exchange six scalps of Frenchmen whom the Shoshones had
killed on the headwaters of the Platte, for scalps of members of their
own party of whom the Patties had killed eight; They also took from them
all the stolen beaver-skins, five mules, and their dried buffalo meat.
After this interchange of civilities the trappers went on to where the
river forked again, neither fork being more than twenty-five or thirty
yards wide. The right-hand-fork pursued a north-east course, and
following it four days brought them (probably in Middle Park) to a large
village of the "Nabahoes." Of these they inquired as to the pass over
the mountains (Continental Divide) and were informed they must follow
the left-hand fork, which they accordingly did, and on the thirty-first
day of May, 1826, came to the gap, which they traversed, by following
the buffalo trails through the snow, in six days. Then they descended
to the Platte, and went on north to the Yellowstone, making in all
a traverse of the whole Rocky Mountain region probably never since
surpassed, and certainly never before approached. A few months later a
lieutenant of the British Navy, R. W. H. Hardy, travelling in Mexico,
chartered in the port of Guaymas a twenty-five-ton schooner, the Bruja
or Sea Witch, and sailed up the Gulf of California. Encountering a good
deal of trouble in high winds and shoals he finally reached a vein
of reddish water which he surmised came from "Red River," and at two
o'clock of the same day he saw an opening ahead which he took to be
the mouth of the river. An hour later all doubt was dispelled, and by
half-past six he came to anchor for the night at the entrance, b