Pattie at Black Canyon 117 
where “the mountains shut in so close upon its shores that we 
were compelled to climb a mountain and travel along the 
aclivity, the river still in sight, and at an immense depth be¬ 
neath us/' This was probably Black Canyon; they are the 
first white men on record to reach it. They now took a re¬ 
markable journey of fourteen days, but unfortunately little de¬ 
tail is given, probably because Battle’s editor considered a cut 
across the country of little importance. They travelled, they 
thought, one hundred leagues along these canyons, with the 
“river bluffs on the opposite shore never more than a mile” 
from them/ Thus they evidently did not see the Grand Can¬ 
yon at its widest part. By April loth they arrived “where the 
river emerges from these horrid mountains, which so cage it up 
as to deprive all human beings of the ability to descend to its 
banks and make use of its waters. No mortal has the power 
of describing the pleasure I felt when I could once more reach 
the banks of the river.” They had suffered for food on this 
journey, but now they were again in a beaver country and also 
killed plenty of elk, the skins of which they dressed for cloth¬ 
ing, They had made the first extended trip on record along 
the Grand Canyon and the other canyons of the Colorado, but 
whether they passed up by the north or the south I am unable 
to determine. My impression is that they passed by the north, 
as they would otherwise have met with the Havasupai in their 
Canyon, with the Little Colorado, and with the Moki. They 
would also have struck the San Juan, but the first stream men¬ 
tioned as coming in is from the north, which they reached three 
days after arriving at the place where they could get to the 
water. Three days after leaving this they met a large body of 
Shoshones. They appear now to be somewhere on Grand 
River. They had a brush with the Shoshones, whom they 
defeated, and then compelled the women to exchange six scalps 
of Frenchmen whom the Shoshones had killed on the head¬ 
waters of the Platte, for scalps of members of their own party 
of whom the Patties had killed eight. They also took from 
^ “ It is perhaps this very long and formidable range of mountains,” says 
Pattie, “ which has caused that this country of Red River has not been more 
explored,” p. g8. 
