The Swallowing Wilderness

In 1824 James Ohio Pattie and his father Sylvester set out from St. Louis on what was to be one of the most adventurous expeditions in pioneering annals. Six years later he returned to his old home in Kentucky, after wanderings that had taken him across prairies and deserts, up the gorges of untraveled streams, and over the ice and snow of unknown mountain passes. James Pattie was one of the earliest explorers of the Southwest and one of the first pioneers to thread the Grand Canyon. Ranging much of the territory of present-day California in the days of the missions and roaming a great many other states and territories, he saw the country and its fauna and people in their pristine state. During the strange and often harrowing interval between 1824 and 1830, he had frequent battles and as frequent friendly encounters with the Indians. He faced death from wild beasts. from thirst, from famine, from the craftiness of savages, the treachery of nature. He traversed the Grand Canyon of the Colorado when its fame was still unsung. He saved himself from perishing in the desert to be thrown into prison in California, and helped to suppress a revolution against the man who had persecuted him. He journeyed up and down the coast on horseback and by sailing vessel. He suffered enormous losses and refused princely offers. He engaged in one or two romances or near-romances with black-eyed senoritas and ended by going to the city of Mexico to seek redress for his inquires. Fascinating as this story is, and abounding in rapid action, thrill, and historical interest, it is generally unknown, since the facts lie buried in books long out of print. The basis for this volume is James Pattie's own journal, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, which is the only other book about the Patties and which is privately printed before Mr. Coblentz wrote the present study. The Swallowing Wilderness is a remarkable work by a distinguished commentator who can look back with perspective, make criticisms and comparisons, and appraise the value and accuracy of the material. Mr. Coblentz' enlivening version of the story recreates and reinterprets for this age a tale that is woven into the American past and that is, in the words of the celebrated historian Robert Glass Cleland, "a classic adventure story of the West" -- Book jacket.