reaching tide-water the 18th of January, 1828. They soon started back up the river, making little progress, and February 16th, having buried their furs and traps, they started westward across the desert. After terrible suffering they reached Santa Catalina Mission in Lower California the 12th of March. Ten days later, by Echeandía's order,[1] they started under a guard for San Diego, where they arrived the 27th. The company included, besides the Patties, Nathaniel Pryor, Richard Laughlin, William Pope, Isaac Slover, Jesse Ferguson, and James Puter,[2] most of whom sooner or later became permanent residents of California.
The narrative of James O. Pattie was subsequently printed; from it I have drawn the preceding résumé, and I have now to present in substance that part of it relating to California, introducing occasional notes from other sources, and reserving comment until the end.[3] On arrival at San Diego the strangers were
- ↑ March 22, 1828, E. to com. of S. Diego. Eight armed men hare appeared at a frontier post with a guia of the N. Mex. custom-house as a passport. Arrest them and seize their arms. Dept. Rec., MS., vi. 194; Pattie's Narr., 170.
- ↑ All the names appear in the archives, in one place or another, though Ferguson is not clearly stated to have belonged to this company. Joseph Yorgens is named, perhaps a corruption of Ferguson's name, since Warner speaks of Ferguson, whom he must have known. Puter is mentioned only once, and there may be some error about his name. Pattie himself strangely names only Slover in his narrative, speaking also of a Dutchman; and on the other hand, Pattie's own name appears only once in the archives.
- ↑ Pattie, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, during an expedition from St Louis through the vast regions between that place and the Pacific Ocean, and thence back through the city of Mexico to Vera Cruz, during journeyings of six years; in which he and his father, who accompanied him, suffered unheard-of hardships and dangers, had various conflicts with the Indians, and were made captives, in which captivity his father died; together with a description of the country, and the various nations through which they passed. Edited by Timothy Flint. Cincinnati, 1833. 8vo. 300 pp. The editor, a somewhat voluminous writer of works largely fictitious, claims not to have drawn on his imagination, but to have changed the author's statement — apparently written — only in orthography and by an occasional abridgment.
The Hunters of Kentucky; or the trials and toils of traders and trappers, during an expedition to the Rocky Mountains, New Mexico, and California, by B. Bilson, New York, 1847, 8vo, 100 pp., is called by T. W. Field, see Sabin's Dictionary, viii. 569-70, 'a reproduction of Pattie's narrative, which the penury of the thieving writer's imagination has not empowered him to clothe with new language, or interleave with new incidents;' yet this reprint is much less rare than the original, and has been much more widely read. From it at the time of publication many people formed their ideas about the
