killing one set of trappers and treating another like old friends, but the secret of the difference on this occasion, perhaps, lay in the difference of approach.  Jedediah Smith was a sort of reincarnation of the old padres, and of all the trappers the only one apparently who allowed piety or humanitarianism to sway his will.  His piety was universally known.  It was not an affectation, but a genuine religion which he carried about with him into the fastnesses of the mountains.  Leaving the Mohaves he crossed the desert to the Californian coast, where he afterwards had trouble with the authorities, who seemed to bear a grudge against all American trappers, and who seized every opportunity to maltreat and rob them.  This, however, did not prevent Smith from returning again after a visit to the northern rendezvous.  But while crossing the Colorado, the Mohaves, who had meanwhile been instigated to harass Americans by the Spaniards (so it is said), attacked the expedition, killing ten men and capturing everything.  Smith escaped to be afterwards killed on the Cimarron by the Comanches.

Pattie and his father again entered the Gila country in the autumn of 1827, with permission from the governor of New Mexico to trap.  After they had gone down the Gila a considerable distance the party split up, each band going in different directions, and after numerous adventures the Patties and their adherents arrived at the Colorado, where their horses were stampeded by the tribe living at the mouth of the Gila, the “Umeas.”  They were left without a single animal, a most serious predicament in a wild country.  The elder Pattie counselled pursuit on foot to recapture the horses or die in the attempt.  But the effort was fruitless.  They then made their way back to their camp, devoured their last morsel of meat, placed their guns on a raft, and swam the river to annihilate the village they saw on the opposite bank.  The Yumas, however, had anticipated this move, and the trappers found there only one poor old man, whom they spared.  Setting fire to every hut in the village, except that of the old man, they had the small satisfaction of watching them burn.  There was now no hope either of regaining the horses or of fighting the Yumas, so they devoted their attention, to building canoes for the purpose of escaping by descending the Colorado.  For this they possessed tools, trappers often having occasion to use a canoe in the prosecution of their work.  They soon had finished eight, dugouts undoubtedly, though Pattie does not say so, and they already had one which Pattie had made on the Gila.  Uniting these by platforms in pairs they embarked upon them with all their furs and traps, leaving their saddles hidden on the bank.