On the 9th of December (1827)* they started, probably the first navigators of this part of the river since Alarcon, 287 years before.  That night they set forty traps and were rewarded with thirty-six beaver.  Such good luck decided them to travel slowly with the current, about four miles an hour, “and trap the river clear.”  The stream was about two hundred to three hundred yards wide, with bottoms extending back from six to ten miles, giving good camp-grounds all along.  With abundance of fat beaver meat and so many pelts added to their store they forgot their misfortunes and began to count on reaching the Spanish settlements they thought existed near the mouth of the river.  Sometimes their traps yielded as many as sixty beaver in a night, and finally they were obliged to halt and make another canoe.  So they went slowly down, occasionally killing a couple of hostile natives, or deer, panthers, foxes, or wild-cats.  One animal is described as like an African leopard, the first they had ever seen.  At length they came to a tribe much shorter of stature than the Yumas, and friendly.  These were probably Cocopas.  Not a patch of clothing existed in the whole band, and Pattie’s men gave the women some old shirts, intimating, as well as they could, that they ought to wear some covering.  These people were well formed, and many of the women had exceptionally fine figures if the judgment of the trappers can be trusted in this respect.  When a gun was fired they either fell prostrate or ran away, so little did they know about firearms.  The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for his guests, who partook of it with reluctance.  All communication was by signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way joyfully.  Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief described were far off on the Californian coast.

* The reader may think I introduce too many year-dates but I have found most books so lacking in this regard that I prefer to err on the other side.

The new year, 1828, came in and still they were going down the river, taking many beaver.  As a New Year’s greeting a shower of arrows from a new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them.  The trappers killed six of them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three beautiful longbows behind.  The only clothing the dead men had on was snail-shells fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair.  The trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements.  “A great many times each day,” says Pattie, “we bring our crafts to the shore and go out to see if we cannot discover the tracks of horses and cattle.”  On the 18th they thought some inundated river entering was the cause of a slackening of the current, and finally they began to rig oars, thinking they would now be obliged to work to get on down-stream, but