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162, and thus get the start of any American trappers that might be sent as a result of Smith's reports. Ogden was successful in this movement, and entered the great valley about the same time that McLeod left it. He also obtained a rich harvest of skins during his stay of eight months, and carried his furs to the north by McLeod's trail. These were the only visits of Hudson Bay trappers before 1832.

The visit of the Patties to California in 1828-30 is the topic next demanding attention. Sylvester Pattie, a Kentuckian, lieutenant of rangers against the Indians in 1812-13, and later a lumberman in Missouri, joined a trapping and trading expedition to New Mexico in 1824, with his son James Ohio Pattie. The father was about forty years of age, and the son a school-boy of perhaps fifteen. With their adventures in New Mexico and Arizona for the next three years I am not concerned here. More than once they visited the Gila, and in September 1827 the elder Pattie was made captain of a company of thirty trappers, organized at Santa Fé to operate on the Colorado. They reached the Colorado and Gila junction December 1st, or at least the Patties and six men did so, the rest having left the Gila, striking northward some two weeks earlier. The eight of Pattie's party were in a desperate strait. They understood from the Yumas that there were Christians down the river, and started to find them, floating on canoe rafts, trapping successfully as they went, and