Note 226 — Chapter XII · To Ruby Valley.

Explored is used in a modified sense. Every foot of ground passed over by Colonel Frémont was perfectly well known to the old trappers and traders, as the interior of Africa to the Arab and Portuguese pombeiros. But this fact takes nothing away from the honors of the man who first surveyed and scientifically observed the country. Among those who preceded Colonel Frémont, the most remarkable, perhaps, was Sylvester Pattie, a Virginian, who, having lost his wife in his adopted home on the Missouri, resolved to trap upon and to trace out the head-waters of the Yellow River. The little company of five persons, among whom were Pattie and his son, set out on the 20th of June, 1824, and on the 22d of August arrived at the head-waters of the Platte, where they found General Pratt proceeding toward Santa Fé. Pattie, in command of 116 men, crossed the dividing ridge, descended into the valley of the Rio Grand del Norto, entered Santa Fé, and trapped on the Gila River. The party broke up on the 27th of November, 1826, when Pattie, accompanied by his son and six others, descended the Colorado, and, after incredible hardships, reached the Hispano-American missions, where they were received with the customary inhumanity. The father died in durance vile; the son, after being released and vaccinated at San Diego, reached San Francisco, whence he returned home viâ Vera Cruz and New Orleans, after an absence of six years. The whole tale is well told in “Harper’s Magazine.”