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 headwaters of the Platte, for scalps of members of their own party of whom the Patties had killed eight; They also took from them all the stolen beaver-skins, five mules, and their dried buffalo meat.
After this interchange of civilities the trappers went on to where the river forked again, neither fork being more than twenty-five or thirty yards wide.

The right-hand-fork pursued a north-east course, and following it four days brought them (probably in Middle Park) to a large village of the "Nabahoes." Of these they inquired as to the pass over the mountains (Continental Divide) and were informed they must follow the left-hand fork, which they accordingly did, and on the thirty-first day of May, 1826, came to the gap, which they traversed, by following the buffalo trails through the snow, in six days.

Then they descended to the Platte, and went on north to the Yellowstone, making in all a traverse of the whole Rocky Mountain region probably never since surpassed, and certainly never before approached.

A few months later a lieutenant of the British Navy, R.W.

H.Hardy, travelling in Mexico, chartered in the port of Guaymas a twenty-five-ton schooner, the Bruja or Sea Witch, and sailed up the Gulf of California.