presently, to their surprise, the current doubled its rate and they were going along at six miles an hour.  None of them had ever had any experience with tides, and they therefore failed to fathom the real cause of these singular changes of speed.  Suddenly, as they were descending, people of the same tribe they had fired on stood on the shore and shouted, making signs for them to land, that their boats would be capsized, but, thinking it a scheme for robbery and murder, they kept on, though they refrained from shooting.  Late in the evening they landed, making their camp on a low point where the canoes with their rich cargoes were tied to some trees.  Pattie’s father took the first watch, and in the night, hearing a roaring noise that he thought indicated a sudden storm, he roused his companions, and all was prepared for a heavy rain, when, instead, to their great consternation, the camp was inundated by “a high ridge of water over which came the sea current combing down like water over a mill-dam.”  The canoes were almost capsized, but this catastrophe was averted by rapid and good management.  Even in the darkness, in the face of a danger unexpected and unknown, the trappers never for an instant lost their coolness and quick judgment, which was so often their salvation.  Paddling the canoes under the trees, they clung to the branches, but when the tide went out the boats were all high and dry.  At last the day dawned bright and fair, enabling them to see what had happened, and when the tide once more returned, they got the canoes out of the trap.  They now proceeded with the ebb tide, stopping with the beginning of the flood, constantly on the lookout for the Spanish settlements, and not till the 28th, when they saw before them such a commotion of waters that their small craft would be instantly engulfed, and wide sandy stretches, perfectly barren, all round, did they realise what a mistake they had made.

“The fierce billows,” says Pattie, “shut us in from below, the river current from above, and murderous savages on either hand on the shore.  We had a rich cargo of furs, a little independence for each one of us could we have disposed of them among the Spanish people whom we expected to have found here.  There were no such settlements.  Every side on which we looked offered an array of danger, famine, or death.  In this predicament what were furs to us.”  In order to escape they worked their way back up the river as far as they could by rowing, poling, and towing, but on February 10th they met a great rise which put a stop to progress.  They now abandoned the canoes, buried the furs in deep pits, and headed for the coast settlements of California.  After many vicissitudes, which I am unable to relate here, they finally arrived, completely worn out, at the Spanish mission of St. Catherine.  Now they believed their troubles were over, and that after recuperating they could go back, bring in their furs, dispose of them handsomely, and reap the reward