ent back eighty
years.* Hardy gave some of the names that still hold on that part of the
river, like Howard's Reach, where his Bruja was stranded, Montague and
Gore Islands, etc.

* Fernando Consag entered the river, 1746, looking for mission sites,
and two centuries before that was Alarcon.

The same month that Hardy sailed away from the mouth of the Colorado,
August, 1826, Jedediah Smith started from Salt Lake (the 22d), passed
south by Ashley's or Utah Lake, and, keeping down the west side of
the Wasatch and the High Plateaus, reached the Virgen River near the
south-western corner of Utah. This he called Adams River in honour of
the President of the United States. Following it south-west through the
Pai Ute country for twelve days he came to its junction with what he
called the Seedskeedee, knowing it to be the same stream so called in
the north. This was the Colorado. Proceeding down the Colorado to
the Mohaves he was kindly received by them and remained some time
recuperating his stock. It may seem strange that the Mohaves should be
so perverse, killing one set of trappers and treating another like old
friends, but the secret of the difference on this occasion, perhaps,
lay in the difference of approach. Jedediah Smith was a sort of
reincarnation of the old padres, and of all the trappers the only one
apparently who allowed piety or humanitarianism to sway his will. His
piety was universally known. It was not an affectation, but a genuine
religion which he carried about with him into the fastnesses of the
mountains. Leaving the Mohaves he crossed the desert to the Californian
coast, where he afterwards had trouble with the authorities, who seemed
to bear a grudge against all American trappers, and who seized every
opportunity to maltreat and rob them. This, however, did not prevent
Smith from returning again after a visit to the northern rendezvous.
But while crossing the Colorado, the Mohaves, who had meanwhile been
instigated to harass Americans by the Spaniards (so it is said),
attacked the expedition, killing ten men and capturing everything. Smith
escaped to be afterwards killed on the Cimarron by the Comanches.

Pattie and his father again entered the Gila country in the autumn of
1827, with permission from the governor of New Mexico to trap. After
they had gone down the Gila a considerable distance the party split up,
each band going in different directions, and after numerous adventures
the Patti