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392 such details of "this most disgraceful expedition" as he had patience to hear. "Had he exerted a little of the lynch law of the wilderness," says Irving, "and hanged these dexterous horsemen in their own lazos, it would but have been a well merited and salutary act of retributive justice. The failure of this expedition was a blow to his pride, and a still greater blow to his purse. The Great Salt Lake still remained unexplored; at the same time the means furnished so liberally to fit out this favorite expedition had all been squandered at Monterey" – so infinitely more important was it to explore the desert lake than to cross the continent!

I have thus mentioned all the parties of trappers known to have entered California in this period, except those of the Hudson's Bay Company from the north, respecting whose presence I find only a few vague allusions. Warner tells us that Young, in the autumn of 1832, found the San Joaquin already hunted, and on American Fork met Michel with a large force of Hudson's Bay Company trappers. In March 1833 John Work applied to Figueroa for a permit to get supplies for his trappers, and in April Padre Gutierrez at Solano complained of the presence of forty men at Suisun calling themselves hunters, but willing to buy stolen cattle, and otherwise disposed to corrupt the neophytes. Kelley on his way to Oregon in the autumn of 1834 was overtaken by Laframboise and party coming from the south. In June 1835 it was reported that the trappers had their headquarters upon an island formed by the Sacramento and Jesus María rivers; and in