Joining Marble Canyon on the north is Glen, 149 miles long, from the Paria to Fremont River. It has but one rapid of consequence. At high water, with the exception of this rapid, the tide sweeps smoothly and swiftly down with a majestic flow. The walls are homogeneous sandstone, in places absolutely perpendicular for about a thousand feet. I have stood on the brink and dropped a stone into the river. The highest walls are 1600 feet. Next is Narrow Canyon, about 9 miles long, 1300 feet deep, and no rapids. It is hardly more than the finish of Cataract, a superb gorge about 40 miles long with a depth of 2700 feet, often nearly vertical. The rapids here are many and violent, the total fall being about 450 feet. At its head is the mouth of the Grand River. The altitude of the junction is 3860 feet.* Following up the Green, we have first Stillwater, then Labyrinth Canyon, much alike, the first 42 3/4 and the second 62 1/2 miles in length. The walls of sandstone are 1300 feet. Their names well describe them, though the stillwater of the first is very swift and straight. There are no rapids in either. All these canyon names, from Green River Valley to the Grand Wash, were applied by Powell. Between Labyrinth and the next canyon, Gray, so called from the colour of its walls, 2000 feet high, is Gunnison Valley, where the river may first be easily crossed. Here the unfortunate Captain Gunnison, in 1853, passed over on his way to his doom, and here, too, the Old Spanish Trail led the traveller in former days toward Los Angeles. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway has taken advantage of the same place to cross. The 36 miles of Gray are hardly more than a continuation of the Canyon of Desolation's 97 miles. Desolation is a fine chasm, whose walls are 2400 feet. The view on page 206 gives an excellent idea of their average character. The mouth of the Uinta River, not far above its head, is 4670 feet above the sea, while Gunnison Valley is 4083, showing a descent for the river, in Desolation and Gray, together of 587 feet. Desolation is full of rapids, some of them bad. Wonsits Valley, which succeeds Desolation, is the longest of the few valleys, being about 87 miles, with a width of 6 or 8 miles. There is a considerable amount of arable land, and along the river bank large groves of cottonwood trees. The river course is winding, the current sluggish, the width being 600 to 800 feet. At the head of this valley is Split-Mountain Canyon, 8 miles long, with ragged, craggy walls 2700 feet high. It contains a number of medium rapids. Island Park separates it from Whirlpool Canyon. It is a charming little valley, full of islands, a mere expansion of the walls, 9 miles long,—9 miles of rainbow, for the surrounding rocks and marls are of every hue. Whirlpool, 2400 feet deep, is about 14 miles in length and contains a number of rapids, but the whirlpools depend on the stage of water. Then comes the beautiful little Echo Park, really only the head of Whirlpool. Its name is derived from a wonderful echo of ten words returned from the smooth wall seen in the cut on page 203. It is only a mile long with walls of 600 feet. At its head enter the Yampa River and Canyon, which mark the foot of Lodore, the most striking gorge, next to the Grand Canyon, on the whole river. Lodore is only 20 miles long, but it is 20 miles of concentrated water-power energy and grandeur, the fall being about 400 feet, the walls 2700. Never for a moment does it relax its assault, and the voyager on its restless, relentless tide, especially at high water, is kept on the alert. The waters indeed come rushing down with fearful impetuosity, recalling to Powell the poem of Southey, on the Lodore he knew, hence the name. The beginning of the gorge is at the foot of Brown's Park through what is called the Gate of Lodore, an abrupt gash in the Uinta Mountains 2000 feet deep. In viewing this entrance the ordinary spectator is at a loss to comprehend how the stream could have begun its attack upon this precipitous ridge. The theory that the river was there before the upheaval formed the mountain does not entirely satisfy, for it would seem in that case that the canyon walls would long ago have become much more broken down than they are. But the walls have a strikingly fresh look, as if formed recently, compared with the time of the original upheaval. It seems possible that there may have been in this region some great lake which lifted the waters up to the top of the ridge to begin their work of corrasion. Such lakes did exist; but lack of space forbids the further pursuit of this discussion here.

* The character of the Grand River is similar to that of the Green, but the canyons above the mouth of the Dolores are not so long nor so deep. The river also carries less water.

Brown's Park, originally called Brown's Hole, after one of the early trappers, is a fine valley about 35 miles long and 5 or 6 miles wide. It is, like the few other valleys, an expansion of the canyon walls. There is considerable arable land, and the place possesses a remarkable climate. Though its general level is so high, around 5500 feet, it receives hardly any snow, and for this reason was long a favourite place for wintering cattle on the drive from Texas to California. It was a great rendezvous, also, for the early trappers and traders, and here stood Fort Davy Crockett, in those days famous. It was one of those necessary places of refuge and meeting, established when the trappers were pursuing their extermination of the beaver, which once were so numerous in all the Western country. The river enters this park from the solitudes of Red Canyon, a splendid chasm, 25 miles long, 2500 feet deep, and abounding in plunging waters. The name is from the colour of the sandstone walls. Above it are three short canyons, Kingfisher, Horseshoe, and Flaming Gorge, aggregating about 10 miles. There are there no rapids worth mentioning, but the scenic beauty is entrancing. The walls are from 1200 to 1600 feet, in places extremely precipitous. Flaming Gorge, with walls 1300 feet, is particularly distinguished by being the beginning of the long series of close canyons. The river enters suddenly from Green River Valley, repeating on a smaller scale the conditions at the entrance to Lodore. From here on up to the Wind River Range the stream is flanked by occasional cliffs and buttes, but the country is comparatively open, and the many tributaries often have fine grassy bottoms. This was the locality of the great rendezvous of the period from 1825 to 1835, and even later.

Green River Valley is an elevated region, from six thousand to seven thousand feet above sea. It stretches from the Wind River Mountains on the north to the Uintas on the south, and is bounded westwardly by the Wyoming Range, and on the east merges into the Laramie Plains. The drainage exit is through the Uintas, as noted, by means of the canyons heading at Flaming Gorge. There are here opportunities for extensive farming by irrigation. The only other chance for agriculture on the river, except Wonsits Valley, Brown's Park, and a few minor places, is below Black Canyon, in the stretches I have called the alluvial and the canyon-valley divisions. In the latter short canyons separate extensive valleys with wide alluvial bottoms capable of high cultivation, though often subject to overflow. Almost anything will grow there. Vast groves of cottonwood and mesquite exist. In the alluvial division, the last stretch of the river, from the Gila down, cotton and sugar cane would probably grow. This is the only division where the water of the river can be extensively diverted. At the mouth of the Gila an old emigrant road to California crossed, and another here in this Green River Valley. A third route of travel was by way of Gunnison's Crossing; and a fourth, though this was seldom traversed, was by the Crossing of the Fathers, some thirty-five miles above the present Lee's Ferry. In Green River Valley, Bonneville built his Fort Nonsense, and the region was for many years the best known of any place beyond the mountains. The routes of trappers and prospectors frequently followed aid native trails, which crossed and recrossed the country in every direction, except where the canyons of the Green and Colorado were approached, when few lines of traverse were open across, and none along the course of the water.

On the headwaters of Green River lived the Crows, who called it the Seedskedee Agie or Prairie Hen River. The Snakes and Utes living farther down called it the Bitter-root. Fremont called it the Rio Verde of the Spaniards, but apparently without good authority. It was also spoken of as Spanish River, from the report that Spaniards occupied its lower valleys. Colorado was also one of its names, and this is what it should have remained. The commonest appellation was Green, supposed to have been derived from a trapper of that name. Just when the term "Colorado" was first applied to the lower river is not now known. It bore several names, but finally Colorado took first place because of its appropriateness. Both the walls and the water are usually red, though the name is undoubtedly derived from the colour of the water. Green River is frequently as red as any river could be. After a storm in the headwaters of Vermilion Creek I have seen the Green a positively bright vermilion.

The Arapahos were said to range into Brown's Park; the Utes were all along the Wonsits Valley and below it on both sides of the river. Then came the Navajos, ranging up to the San Juan and above.* On the north side, below the San Juan, were the various bands of Pai Utes, while on the south were the Puebloan tribes, with the Apaches, Suppais, Wallapais, etc., while still below came the Mohaves, Cocopas, and Yumas, with, on the Gila, the Pimas, Papagos, and Maricopas. The 250,000 square miles of the basin were variously apportioned amongst these tribes, but their territorial claims were usually well defined.

* For notes on the distribution of tribes see the Seventh Ann. Rep, Bu. Ethnology; Wheeler's Report, vol. i.; Report of Lieut. Ives, Works of H. H. Bancroft, and Garces, by Elliott Coues.

The vegetation of the area, especially that of the lower half, possesses singular characteristics quite in keeping with the extraordinary topography. Here flourishes the cactus, that rose of the desert, its lovely blossoms red, yellow, and white, illuminating in spring the arid wastes. The soft green of its stems and the multiplicity of its forms and species, are a constant delight. It writhes and struggles across the hot earth, or spreads out silver-spined branches into a tree-like bush, or, in the great pitahaya, rises in fierce dignity like a monitor against the deep blue sky. And the yuccas are quite as beautiful, with their tall central rods so richly crowned with bell-like blossoms, the fantastic Clistoyucca arborescens, or Joshua tree, being more in harmony with the archaic landscape than any other plant there. As the traveller crosses one of the open forests of this tree, which is often twenty-five feet high, the more distant ones appear to beckon like some uncanny desert octopus yearning to draw him within reach of those scrawny arms. The blossom of this monstrous growth is a revelation, so unexpected is it. A group as large as one's head, pure white, on the extremity of a dagger-covered bough, it is like an angel amidst bayonets. The pitahaya, often more than thirty feet high and twelve to twenty-four inches diameter, is a fit companion for the Joshua, with an equally startling blossom.

"To go out on the desert... and meet these cacti is like whispering into the ear of the Sphinx, and listening at her locked lips,... and to go out in April and see them suddenly abloom is as though the lips of the Sphinx should part and utter solemn words. A bunch of white flowers at the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out of this dead, gaunt, prickly thing—is not that Nature's consummate miracle, a symbol of resurrection more profound than the lily of the fields."*

* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.

Then there is the glorious ocotillo, waving its long, slender wands from the ground-centre, each green with its myriad little lance-shaped leaves, and bursting at the end into a scarlet flame of blossoms dazzling in the burning sunlight. Near by springs up the Barrel cactus, a forbidding column no one dares touch. A little farther is the "yant" of the Pai Ute, with leaves fringed with teeth like its kind, the Agaves. This is a source of food for the native, who roasts the asparagus-like tip starting up in the spring, and he also takes the whole head, and, trimming off the outer leaves, bakes it in pits, whereby it is full of sweetness like thick molasses. The inner pulp is dried in sheets and laid away. Near by, the Pinyon tree in the autumn sheds its delicious nuts by the bushel, and meanwhile there are many full, nutritious grass seeds, the kind called "ak" by the Pai Utes almost equalling wheat in the size of its kernel. In the lowlands grows the stolid mesquite tree, more underground than above, whose roots furnish excellent firewood,—albeit they must be broken up with a sledge hammer, for no axe will stand the impact. Near it may be seen huge bunches of grass (or perhaps straw would describe it better), which the white man gathers for hay with a huge hoe. Then there is the ever-present, friendly sage-brush, miniature oak trees, with branch and trunk, so beautiful. It grows, as a rule, about two feet high, but I have seen it higher than my head; that is, at least six feet. Beneath its spreading shade in the south lurks the Gila Monster, terrible in name at any rate, a fearful object to look upon, a remnant of antediluvian times, a huge, clumsy, two-foot lizard. The horned toad is quite as forbidding in appearance, but he is a harmless little thing. Here we are in the rattlesnake's paradise. Nine species are found along the Mexican border; and no wonder. The country seems made for them,—the rocks, cliffs, canyons, pitahayas, Joshuas, and all the rest of it. Notwithstanding their venom they have beauty, and when one is seen at the bottom of some lonely, unfrequented canyon, tail buzzing, head erect, and defiant, glistening eyes, a man feels like apologising for the intrusion. Above in the limpid sunlight floats the great eagle, deadly enemy of the rattlesnake; from a near-by bush the exquisite song of the mocking-bird trills out, and far up the rocks the hoof-strokes of the mountain sheep strike with a rattle of stones that seems music in the crystal air. Yonder the wild turkey calls from the pine trees, or we hark to the whir of the grouse or the pine-hen. Noisy magpies startle the silence of the northern districts, and the sage-hen and the rabbit everywhere break the solitude of your walk. Turn up a stone and sometimes you see a revengeful scorpion: anon the huge tarantula comes forth to look at the camp-fire. As one sits resting on a barren ledge, the little swifts come out to make his acquaintance. Whistle softly and a bright-coated fellow will run up even upon your shoulder to show his appreciation of the Swan Song. Antelope dart scornfully away across the open plains, and the little coyote halts in his course to turn the inquisitive gaze of his pretty bright eyes upon this new animal crossing his path. The timber wolf, not satisfied with staring, follows, perhaps, as if enjoying company, at the same time occasionally licking his chaps. When the sun goes down his long-drawn bark rolls out into the clear winter sky like a song to the evening star, rendering the blaze of the camp-fire all the more comfortable. Under the moonlight the sharper bark of the coyote swells a chorus from the cliffs, and the rich note of the night-storm is accentuated by the long screech of the puma prowling on the heights. In daylight his brother, the wild-cat, reminds one of Tabby at home by the fireside. There is the lynx, too, among the rocks; and on the higher planes the deer, elk, and bear have their homes. In Green River Valley once roamed thousands of bison. The more arid districts have the fewest large animals, and conversely the more humid the most, though in the latter districts the fauna and flora approach that of the eastern part of the continent, while as the former are approached the difference grows wider and wider, till in the southern lowlands there is no resemblance to eastern types at all. Once the streams everywhere had thousands of happy beaver, with their homes in the river banks, or in waters deepened by their clever dams. Otter, too, were there. The larger rivers are not favourable for fish on account of the vast amount of sediment, but in the smaller, especially in the mountain streams, trout were abundant. In Green River occurs a salmon-trout attaining a length of at least four feet. This is also found in the Colorado proper, where another fish, with a humpback, is to be caught. I do not know the name of this, but imagine it the same as has in latter days been called "squaw-fish."

All over the region the rocks are seamed by mineral veins. Some of these have already poured forth millions of dollars, while others await a discoverer. On the river itself gold is found in the sands; and the small alluvial bottoms that occur in Glen Canyon, and a few gravel bars in the Grand, have been somewhat profitably worked, though necessarily on a small scale. The granite walls of the Grand Canyon bear innumerable veins, but as prospecting is there so difficult it will be many a long year before the best are found. The search for mineral veins has done much to make the farther parts known, just as the earlier search for beaver took white men for the first time into the fastnesses of the great mountains, and earlier the effort to save the souls of the natives marked their main trails into the wilderness.

This sketch of the Basin of the Colorado is most inadequate, but the scope of this volume prevents amplification in this direction. These few pages, however, will better enable the reader to comprehend the labours of the padres, the trappers, and the explorers, some account of whose doings is presented in the following chapters.*

* In connection with the subject of erosion and corrasion the reader is advised to study the following works, which are the standards: The Exploration of the Colorado of the West, and the Geology of the Uinta Mountains, by J. W. Powell; The Henry Mountains, by G. K. Gilbert; The Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah, and The Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District, by C. E. Dutton.



CHAPTER IV

Onate, 1604, Crosses Arizona to the Colorado—A Remarkable Ancient Ruin Discovered by Padre Kino, 1694—Padre Garces Sees the Grand Canyon and Visits Oraibi, 1776—The Great Entrada of Padre Escalante across Green River to Utah Lake, 1776—Death of Garces Ends the Entrada Period, 1781.

In the historical development of the Basin of the Colorado four, chief epochs are apparent. The discovery of the river, as already outlined in previous chapters, is the first; second, the entradas of the padres; third, the wanderings of the trappers; and fourth, the expeditions of the explorers. These epochs are replete with interesting and romantic incidents, new discoveries; starvations; battles; massacres; lonely, dangerous journeys, etc., which can only be touched upon in a volume of the present size. Dr. Coues placed the diary of Garces, one of the chief actors of this great four-act life-drama, in accessible shape, and had not his lamented death interfered he would have put students under further obligation to him.

Preliminary to the entradas of the padres, Don Antonio de Espejo, in 1583, went from the Rio Grande to Moki and westward to a mountain, probably one of the San Francisco group, but he did not see the Colorado. Twenty-one years elapsed before a white man again ventured into this region. In 1604, Don Juan de Onate, the wealthy governor of New Mexico, determined to cross from his headquarters at the village of San Juan on the Rio Grande, by this route to the South Sea, and, accompanied by thirty soldiers and two padres, he set forth, passing west by way of the pueblo of Zuni, and probably not seeing at that time the celebrated Inscription Rock,* for, though his name is said to be first of European marks, the date is 1606. From Zuni he went to the Moki towns, then five in number, and possibly somewhat south of the present place. Beyond Moki ten leagues, they crossed a stream flowing north-westerly, which was called Colorado from the colour of its water,—the first use of the name so far traced. This was what we now call the Little Colorado. They understood it to discharge into the South Sea (Pacific), and probably Onate took it for the very headwaters of the Buena Guia which Alarcon had discovered over sixty years before. As yet no white man had been north of Moki in the Basin of the Colorado, and the only source of information concerning the far northern region was the natives, who were not always understood, however honestly they might try to convey a knowledge of the country.

* This is a quadrangular mass of sandstone about a mile long, thirty-five miles east of Zuni. On its base at the eastern end are a number of native and European inscriptions, the oldest, of the European dates according to Simpson, being 1606, recording a visit by Onate. The rock, or, more properly, mesa, is also called the Morro. Chas. F. Lummis has also written on this subject.

Skirting the southern edge of the beautiful San Francisco Mountain region, through the superb forest of pine trees, Onate finally descended from the Colorado Plateau to the headwaters of the Verde, where he met a tribe called Cruzados, because they wore little crosses from the hair of the forehead, a relic, no doubt, of the time when Alarcon had so freely distributed these emblems among the tribes he encountered on the Colorado, friends probably of these Cruzados. The latter reported the sea twenty days distant by way of a small river running into a greater, which flowed to the salt water. The small river was Bill Williams Fork, and on striking it Onate began to see the remarkable pitahaya adorning the landscape with its tall, stately columns; and all the strange lowland vegetation followed. The San Andreas, as he called this stream, later named Santa Maria by Garces, he followed down to the large river into which it emptied, the Colorado, which he called the Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza, or River of Good Hope, evidently deciding that it merited a more distinguished title than had been awarded it at the supposed headwaters. He appears to have well understood what river this was, and we wonder why he gave it a new name when it had already received two. Sometimes in new lands explorers like to have their own way. They went down the Colorado, after a party had examined the river a little above the mouth of the Bill Williams Fork, meeting with various bands of friendly natives, among whom we recognise the Mohaves and the Cocopas. Not far below where Onate reached the Esperanza he entered the Great Colorado Valley and soon crossed the highest point attained by Alarcon in 1340, probably near the upper end of the valley. He now doubled Alarcon's and presently also Melchior Diaz's paths, and arrived at the mouth of the river on the 25th of January, 1605, the first white man in over sixty years. A large harbour which struck his fancy was named in honour of the saint's day, Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo, for the sun seldom went down without a Spaniard of those days thus propitiating a saint. We are more prone to honour the devil in these matters. The Gila they called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name never used again. So it often happens with names bestowed by explorers. The ones they regard most highly vanish, while some they apply thoughtlessly adhere forever.

All the tribes of this region, being familiar with the Californian coast, described it in a way that caused Onate to believe that the gulf was the South Sea, extending indefinitely beyond the mouth of the Colorado northwards, and thus the persistent error that Lower California was an island received further confirmation. Without going across to the sea beyond the mountains, which would have dispelled the error, Onate returned to the Rio Grande by the outward route, suffering so greatly for food that the party were forced to eat some of their horses, a source of relief often resorted to in future days in this arid country. A few years after Onate's expedition Zalvidar (1618), with Padre Jiminez and forty-seven soldiers, went out to Moki, and from there fifteen leagues to the Rio de Buena Esperanza, but they evidently encountered Marble Canyon, and soon returned.

Another name closely linked with the early history of the Colorado is that of Padre Eusibio Francisco Kino,* an Austrian by birth and a member of the Jesuit order. This indefatigable enthusiast travelled back and forth, time and again, over the whole of northern Sonora and the southern half of Arizona, then comprised in Pimeria Alta, the upper land of the Pimas, and Papagueria, the land of the Papagos. His base of operations was a mission he established in Sonora; the mission of Dolores, founded in 1687. For some thirty years Kino laboured in this field with tireless energy, flinching before no danger or difficulty. He was the first white man to see the extraordinary ruin called Casa Grande, near the present town of Florence, and on the occasion of his first visit he took advantage of the structure to say mass within its thick adobe walls. This is probably the most remarkable ancient building within the limits of the United States, For a long time it was called the House of Montezuma, though, of course, Montezuma never heard of it. A similar ruin, called Casas Grandes, exists in Sonora. The construction is what is called cajon, that is, adobe clay rammed into a box or frame, which is lifted for each successive course as the work advances. In the dry air of that region such walls become extremely hard, and will endure for ages if the foundations are not sapped.** Kino paid a second visit to the ruin of Casa Grande in 1697, this time accompanied by Captain Juan Mateo Mange, an officer detailed with his command to escort the padres on their perilous journeys.

* The name is written Kuhn, Kuhne, Quino, and in several other ways. Humboldt used Kuhn, and either this or Kuhne is probably the correct form, but long usage gives preference to Kino.

** See The North Americans of Yesterday, by F. S. Dellenbaugh, p. 234; and for complete details see papers by Cosmos Mindeleff, Thirteenth An. Rep, Bu. Eth. and Fifteenth An. Rep. Bu, Eth.; also Font's description in Coues's Garces, p. 93.

The method of the authorities was to establish a military post, called a presidio, at some convenient point, from which protection would be extended to several missions. The soldiers in the field wore a sort of buckskin armour, with a double-visored helmet and a leathern buckler on the left arm. Kino was as often without as with the guardianship of these warriors, and seems to have had very little trouble with the natives. The Apaches, then and always, were the worst of all, In his numerous entradas he explored the region of his labours pretty thoroughly, reaching, in 1698, a hill from which he saw how the gulf ended at the mouth of the Colorado; and the following year he was again down the Gila, which he called Rio de los Apostoles, to the Colorado, now blessed with a fourth name, the Rio de los Martires. "Buena Guia" "del Tizon," "Esperanza," and "los Martires," all in about a century and a half, and still the great Dragon of Waters was not only untamed hut unknown. Kino kept up his endeavours to inaugurate somewhere a religious centre, but without success. The San Dionisio marked on his map at the mouth of the Gila was only the name he gave a Yuma village at that point, and was never anything more. On November 21, 1701, Kino reached a point only one day's journey above the sea, where he crossed the river on a raft, but he made no attempt to go to the mouth. At last, however, on March 7, 1702, he actually set foot on the barren sands where the waters, gathered from a hundred mountain peaks of the far interior, are hurled against the sea-tide, the first white visitor since Onate, ninety-eight years before. Visits of Europeans to this region were then counted by centuries and half-centuries, yet on the far Atlantic shore of the continent they were swarming in the cradle of the giant that should ultimately rule from sea to sea, annihilating the desert. But even the desert has its charms. One seems to inhale fresh vitality from its unpeopled immensity. I never could understand why a desert is not generally considered beautiful; the kind, at least, we have in the South-west, with all the cacti, the yucca, and the other flowering plants unfamiliar to European or Eastern eyes, and the lines of coloured cliffs and the deep canyons. There is far more beauty and variety of colour than in the summer meadow-stretches and hills of the Atlantic States. So the good Padre Kino, after all, was perhaps to be congratulated on having those thirty years, interesting years, before the wilds could be made commonplace.

Arizona did not seem to yield kindly to the civilisers; indeed, it was like the Colorado River, repellent and unbreakable. The padres crossed it and recrossed it on the southwestern corner, but they made no impression. After Kino's death in 1711 there was a lull in the entradas to the Colorado, though Ugarte, coming up along the eastern coast of Lower California, sailed to the mouth of the river in July, 1721. Twenty-four years later (1744) Padre Jacobo Sedelmair went down the Gila from Casa Grande to the great bend, and from there cut across to the Colorado at about the mouth of Bill Williams Fork, but his journey was no more fruitful than those of his predecessors in the last two centuries. It seems extraordinary in these days that men could traverse a country, even so infrequently, during two whole centuries and yet know almost nothing about it. Two years after Sedelmair touched the Colorado, Fernando Consag, looking for mission sites, came up the gulf to its mouth, and when he had sailed away there was another long interval before the river was again visited by Europeans. This time it was over a quarter of a century, but the activity then begun was far greater than ever before, and the two padres who now became the foremost characters in the drama that so slowly moved upon the mighty and diversified stage of the South-west, were quite the equals in tireless energy of the Jesuit Kino. These two padres were Garces and Escalante, more closely associated with the history of the Basin of the Colorado than any one who had gone before. Francisco Garces, as well as Escalante, was of the Franciscan order, and this order, superseding the Jesuit, was making settlements, 1769-70, at San Diego and Monterey, as well as taking a prominent part in those already long established on the Rio Grande. There was no overland connection between the California missions and those of Sonora and the Rio Grande, and the desire to explore routes for such communication was one of the incentives of both Garces and Escalante, in their long entradas. But it seemed to be the habit of those days, either never to seek information as to what had previously been accomplished, or to forget it, for the expedition of Onate might as well never have been made so far as its effect on succeeding travels was concerned. He had crossed Arizona by the very best route, yet Escalante, 172 years afterward, goes searching for one by way of Utah Lake! Coming from the west, the Moki Towns were ever the objective point, for they were well known and offered a refuge in the midst of the general desolation. Garces had his headquarters at the mission of San Xavier del Bac, or Bac, as it was commonly called, nine miles south of the present town of Tucson. Here Kino had begun a church in 1699, and at a later period another better one was started near by. This was finished in 1797 and to-day stands the finest monument in the South-west of the epoch of the padres. It is a really beautiful specimen of the Mexico-Spanish church architecture of that time. No better testimony could there be of the indefatigable spiritual energy of the padres than this artistic structure standing now amidst a few adobe houses, and once completely abandoned to the elements. Such a building should never be permitted to perish, and it well merits government protection. Its striking contrast to Casa Grande, the massive relic of an unknown time, standing but a few leagues distant, will always render this region of exceptional interest to the artist, the archaeologist, and the general traveller.

From Bac, under the protection of the presidio of Tubac, some thirty miles farther south, later transferred (1776) to the present Tucson, Garces carried on his work. He made five great entradas from the time of his arrival in June, 1768. The first was in that same year, the second in 1770, but in these he did not reach the Colorado, and we will pass them by. In the third, 1771, he went down the Gila to the Colorado and descended the latter stream along its banks perhaps to the mouth. On the fourth, 1774, he went with Captain Anza to the Colorado and farther on to the mission of San Gabriel in California, near Los Angeles, and in his fifth, and most important one, 1775-76, he again accompanied Captain Anza, who was bound for the present site of San Francisco, there to establish a mission. Padre Font was Anza's chaplain, and with Garces's aid later made a map of the country.* At Yuma Garces left the Anza party, went down to the mouth of the Colorado, and then up along the river to Mohave, and after another trip out to San Gabriel, he started on the most important part of all his journeys, from Mohave to the Moki Towns, the objective point of all entradas eastward from the Colorado. The importance attached at that time to the towns of the Moki probably seems absurd to the reader, but it must not be forgotten that the Moki were cultivators of the soil and always held a store of food-stuffs in reserve. They were also builders of very comfortable houses, as I can testify from personal experience. Thus they assumed a prominence, amidst the desolation of the early centuries, of which the railway in the nineteenth speedily robbed them.

* Font says of Garces: "He seems just like an Indian himself... and though the food of the Indians is as nasty and disgusting as their dirty selves the padre eats it with great gusto." Dr. Coues had planned to publish a translation of Font's important diary. See Garces, by Elliot Coues, p. 172, Font meant his remark as praise.

Garces, like most of his kind, was an enthusiast on the subject of saving the souls of the natives. "It made him sick at heart," says Coues, "to see so many of them going to hell for lack of the three drops of water he would sprinkle over them if only they would let him do it." With this idea ever in mind he toiled up and down the lower Colorado, and received assistance from a Yuma chief called Captain Palma. Once when he came up the river to Yuma, where he had left Padre Eisarc, the report the latter gave was so encouraging that Garces exclaims: "I gave a thousand thanks to God to hear them sing psalms divine that the padre had taught them." He further declared that Captain Palma would put to the blush for observing the forms of piety, "many veteran Christians, by the reverence and humility with which he assisted at the holy sacrifice." But alas for the padre's fond hopes!

The Yumas called the Colorado Javill or Hahweel according to Garces; and he also says the name Colorado was given because, as the whole country is coloured, its waters are tinged in the month of April, when the snows are melting, but that they are not always red, which is exactly the case. The name is also said to be a translation of the Piman title "buqui aquimuti."

Leaving Mohave June 4, 1776, Garces struck eastward across Arizona, guided by some Wallapais, but with no white companion. These people had told him about the distance to Moki and the nature of the intervening region. Heading Diamond Creek* on his mule, Garces made for the romantic retreat of the Havasupais in the canyon of Cataract Creek, a tributary from the south of the Grand Canyon. He was the first white man, so far as known, to visit this place, and in reaching it he passed near the rim of the great gorge, though he did not then see it. This was the region of the Aubrey cliffs and the place in all probability where Cardenas approached the Grand Canyon, 236 years before. Garces arrived among the Havasupai or Jabesua, as he called them, by following a trail down their canyon that made his head swim, and was impassable to his mule, which was taken in by another route. At one place a ladder was even necessary to complete the 2000 feet of descent to the settlement, where a clear creek suddenly breaks from the rocks, and, rapid and blue, sweeps away down 2000 or more feet to the Colorado, falling in its course at one point over a precipice in three cataracts aggregating 250 feet, from which it takes its name. Here are about 400 acres of arable land along the creek, on which the natives raise corn, beans, squashes, peaches, apricots, sunflowers, etc. There are now about 200 of these people, and they are of Yuman stock. Garces was well treated and rested here five days.

* This name, by the way, has no connection with the notorious "Arizona" diamond swindle of more recent years. It bore this name in Ives's time and the swindle was much later—1872. The alleged diamond field also was not in Arizona at all, but in north-western Colorado.

Soon after leaving this retreat he "halted at the sight of the most profound canones which ever onward continue, and within these flows the Rio Colorado."

"There is seen [he continues] a very great Sierra which in the distance looks blue, and there runs from the southeast to the north-west a pass open to the very base, as if the sierra were cut artificially to give entrance to the Rio Colorado into these lands. I named this singular pass Puerto de Bucareli,* and though to all appearances would not seem to be great the difficulty of reaching thereunto, I considered this to be impossible in consequence of the difficult canones which intervened. From this position said pass bore east northeast."

* After the viceroy.

The padre is standing in admiration before the long line of the Kaibab seen as a great sierra from this position on the south-east, and as the land on the south rises toward the rim it probably appeared to him as if the sierra were really a continuation of the San Francisco Mountains on his right, and was cut in twain by the great gorge of the river. From his standpoint he looked up Marble Canyon, and all the directions he mentions are exactly correct. They saw smokes on the north, which his guides said were made by the Payuches (Pai Utes) living on the other side. The Kaivavitz band of Pai Utes in summer occupy their lands on the summit of the Kaibab, hunting deer and camping in the lovely open glades surrounded by splendid forest. This same day his guides pointed out some tracks of Yabipai Tejua, who go this way to see and trade with their friends, "those who live, as already said, on the other side of the Rio Colorado." It was one of the intertribal highways. Just where it crossed the canyon is hard to say. There were several old trails, and one came down from the north, reaching the river a few miles below the Little Colorado, but where it came out on the south side I do not know. There was once another trail which came from the north down the canyon of Kanab Creek and found a way across to the Coconinos or Havasupai; at least Jacob Hamblin told me he was so informed by the Pai Utes. The "Hance" trail, I believe, was built on the line of an old native one, and probably this was the one the Yabipais were heading for.

* Jacob Hamblin, whom I knew very well, was the "Leather-stocking" of Utah—a man who knew the Amerinds of Utah and northern Arizona better than any one who ever lived.

Garces had a good understanding of the topography, for he says when he reached the Rio Jaquesila de San Pedro, as he called the Little Colorado, that it joined the main stream just above his Puerto de Bucareli. Coues thought it probable that Cardenas on his way to the Grand Canyon, followed from Moki the same trail Garces is now taking to reach that place, and that therefore the first view Cardenas had of the canyon was from near the same place as that of Garces—that is, he saw the Puerto de Bucareli. This is hardly probable, as Garces was only five days reaching Moki from here, and Cardenas travelled twenty from Tusayan to the canyon. As I pointed out on a previous page, so far as the data go, Cardenas reached the Grand Canyon opposite the east side of the Shewits plateau.

Of the Little Colorado Garces said: "The bed of this river as far as the confluence is a trough of solid rock, very profound, and wide about a stone's throw." That this was an accurate statement the view on page 95 amply proves. Indeed, the accuracy of most of these early Spaniards, as to topography, direction, etc., is extraordinary. As a rule where they are apparently wrong it is ourselves who are mistaken, and if we fully understand their meaning we find them to be correct. Garces found his way down to the Little Colorado by means of a side canyon and got out again on the other side in the same way. Finally, on July 2nd, he arrived at the pueblo of Oraibi, his objective point, and when he and his tired mule had climbed up on the mesa which bears the town, the women and children lined the housetops to get a glimpse of the singular stranger.

Spaniards were something of a novelty, though by no means unheard of, just as even I was something of a novelty when I visited Oraibi one hundred years after the Padre Garces, because the Oraibis never encouraged white visitors.* The first missions were established among the Moki in 1629, when Benavides was custodian of the Rio Grande district, and included Zuni and Moki in his field. Three padres were then installed at Awatuwi, one of the towns, on the mesa east of what is now called the "East" Mesa. Four were at work amongst the various towns at the time of the Pueblo uprising in 1680, and as one began his labours at Oraibi as early as 1650, a priest was not an unknown object to the older people. All the missionaries having been killed in 1680, and Awatuwi, where a fresh installation was made, having been annihilated in 1700 by the Moki, for three-quarters of a century they had seen few if any Spaniards. Therefore the women and children were full of curiosity. Padre Escalante had been here from Zuni the year before, looking over the situation with a view to bringing all the Moki once more within the fold. At that time Escalante also tried to go on to what he called the Rio de los Cosninos, the Colorado, but he was unable to accomplish his purpose. Had he once had a view of the Grand Canyon it would undoubtedly have saved him a good many miles of weary travel in his northern entrada of this same year that Garces reached Oraibi.

* A year or two after my visit, James Stevenson, of the Bureau of Ethnology, was driven away from Oraibi. Thomas Keam and he then went there with a force of Navajos and compelled the surrender of the chiefs who had been most obnoxious. They took them to Ream's Canyon and confined them on bread and water till they apologised.

Garces was not permitted to enter the house where his Yabipai guide intended to stop, and he therefore made his way to a corner formed by a jutting wall, and there unsaddled his faithful mule, which the Yabipai took to a sheep corral. The padre remained in his corner, gathering a few scattered corn-stalks from the street, with which he made a fire and cooked a little atole. All day long the people came in succession to stare at him. I can testify to the sullen unfriendliness of the Oraibi, and I have seen few places I have left with greater pleasure than that I felt when, in 1885, I rode away from this town. Garces was not able to make a favourable impression, and after, considering the feasibility of going on to Zuni, and deciding against it, he thought he would visit the other towns with a hope of being better received, but a few yells from some herders sent him back to his Yabipai guide and several friendly Zunis at Oraibi, where he occupied his corner again. In the morning he perceived a multitude approaching, some bedecked with paint and feathers, and when four of these came forward and ordered him to leave he held up his crucifix and assured them of his desire to do good to them. They made wry faces and cried "No, no," so that he called for his mule and departed, smiling upon them as he went. He returned by the same route. It was the 4th of July when Garces was expelled by the Oraibis, a declaration of independence on their part which they have maintained down to the present day. That other Declaration of Independence was made on this same day on the far Atlantic coast. The Colonies were engaged in their battle for freedom, but no sound of that strife then reached New Mexico, yet its portent was great for that region where, three-quarters of a century later, the flag of the Great Republic should float triumphant over all, Garces reached the Colorado once more on July 25th, his arduous journey absolutely fruitless so far as missionary work was concerned. He arrived at his mission of Bac September 17, 1776.

On July 29, 1776, another even greater entrada was begun at Santa Fe by the Fray Padre Francisco Silvestre Velez Escalade,* in his search for a route to Monterey, unaware that Garces had just traversed, next to that of Onate, the most practicable short route to be found. Garces had written to Escalante, ministro doctrinero of Zuni, a letter from Oraibi, but as the ministro had already departed for Santa Fe, leaving Fray Mariano Rosate in charge at Zuni, the letter probably did not reach him till his return. The northern country, notwithstanding several small entradas and the considerable one of Juan Maria Ribera in 1761, who went as far as Gunnison River, was still a terra incognita, and the distance to the Pacific was also an uncertain quantity. Escalante believed a better road existed to Monterey by way of the north than by the middle route, and a further incentive to journey that way was probably the rumours of large towns in that direction, the same will-o'-the-wisp the Spaniards for nearly three centuries had been vainly pursuing. The authorities had urged two expeditions to Alta California, to establish communication; Garces and Captain Anza had carried out one, and now Escalante was to execute the other.

* H. H. Bancroft gives a map of the route as he understands it, History of the Pacific States, p. 35, vol. xxv., also a condensation of the diary. Philip Harry gives a condensation in Simpson's Report, Appendix R., p. 489. Some river names have been shifted since Harry wrote. What we call the Grand, upper part, was then the Blue.

Besides the ministro Escalante, there were in the party eight persons, Padre Francisco Dominguez, Juan Pedro Cisneros, alcalde of Zuni, Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, capitain miliciano of Sante Fe, Don Juan Lain, and four other soldiers. Lain had been with Ribera and was therefore official guide. They went from Sante Fe by way of Abiquiu and the Chama River to the San Juan about where it first meets the north line of New Mexico, and thence across the several tributaries to the head of the Dolores River, which they descended for eleven days. I am at a loss to exactly follow the route, not having been able to consult either the copy or the original of Escalante's diary. The party made its way across Grand River, the Book Plateau, White River, and finally to the Green, called the San Buenaventura, which was forded, apparently near the foot of Split-Mountain Canyon. Here they killed one of the bisons which were numerous in the valley. Following the course of the river down some ten leagues, they went up the Uinta and finally crossed the Wasatch, coming down the western side evidently by way of what is now known as Spanish Fork, to Utah Lake, then called by the natives Timpanogos. Here they heard of a greater lake to the north, but instead of seeking it they turned their course south-westerly in what they considered the direction of Monterey through the Sevier River Valley, the Sevier being called the Santa Isabel, and kept down along the western edge of the High Plateaus. It being by this time the 7th of October, Escalante concludes that it will be impossible to reach Monterey before winter sets in and persuades his companions that the best thing to do is to strike for the Moki towns. They cast lots to determine this, and the decision is for Moki. Evidently he thought this would be an easy road. When he was at Moki the year before, had he not failed to go to the Colorado he would have better understood the nature of the undertaking he now set for his expedition.

Going on southward past what is now Parowan, they came to the headwaters of a branch of the Virgen, in Cedar Valley, and this they followed down to the main stream which they left flowing south-westerly. The place where they turned from it was probably about at Toquerville.* They were now trying to make their general course south-east. Could I but see the original I certainly could identify the route from here on, having been over the region so often. As Escalante was obtaining what information he could from the natives, it seems to me that his first course "south-east" was to Pipe Spring along the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs, then his "north-east" was up toward Kanab and through Nine-Mile Valley to the head of the Kaibab, where a trail led him over to House Rock Valley, on his "south-east" tack, skirting the Vermilion Cliffs again. But they lost it and struck the river at Marble Canyon, through a misunderstanding of the course of the trail, which bore easterly and then northerly around the base of the cliffs to what is now Lee's Ferry, where there was an ancient crossing. Another trail goes (or did go) across the north end of the Paria Plateau and divides, one branch coming down the high cliffs about three miles up the Paria from the mouth, by a dizzy and zig-zag path, and the other keeping on to the south-east and striking the river at the very point for which Escalante was evidently now searching. Perhaps the Pai Utes had told him of this trail as well as the one he tried to follow, which would have taken him to the Lee's Ferry crossing about thirty-five miles below. He seems to have reached the brink of Marble Canyon, perhaps half-way between the Paria and the Little Colorado,** and followed up-stream first north and then (beyond Paria) north-east, hunting for a ford. Twice he succeeded in descending to the water, but both times was unable to cross. They had now become so reduced in food that they were obliged to eat some of their horses. With great difficulty they climbed over the cliffs, and at the end of twelve days from their first arrival at the river they found the ford, which ever since has been called El Vado de los Padres. This was the 8th of November, 1776. The entrance to the river from the west, the side of their approach, is through a small canyon in the homogeneous sandstone, no more than ten feet wide. The course is then about half a mile down the middle of the river over a long bar or shoal to the opposite side, where the exit is made upon a rocky slope. It is a most difficult ford. The trail through the water at the low stage, when, only, fording is possible, is marked by piles of large stones. There is no ford at the Lee's Ferry crossing.

* From here to the California mission of San Gabriel would hardly have been as difficult as the route taken, excepting perhaps the matter of water, and little if any further than the distance to Santa Fe, but the Pai Utes could give him no information of the distance to the sea.

** There was an old crossing near there, also.

From this Crossing-of-the-Fathers, just above where the river enters Arizona, to the Moki Towns Escalante had a plain trail, and a much simpler topography, and had no difficulty in arriving there. The remainder of his road, from Moki to Zuni and around to Santa Fe, was one he had travelled before, and the party soon completed the circuit of more than 1500 miles mainly through unknown country, one of the most remarkable explorations ever carried out in the West. It is sometimes stated that Escalante crossed the Grand Canyon, but, as is perfectly plain from the data, he did not; in fact, he could not have done it with horses.

Garces was not yet finished with his labours on the lower Colorado, and we will return to him. The authorities had decided to establish there two nondescript settlements, a sort of cross between mission, pueblo, and presidio. Captain Palma, the Yuma chief, whose devotions and piety had so delighted the good Father, was eager to have missions started, and constantly importuned the government to grant them. Garces, therefore, went to Yuma again in 1779 to prepare the way, and in 1780 two of the hybrid affairs were inaugurated, one at what is now Fort Yuma, called Puerto de la Purisima Concepcion, after the little canyon hard by, so named by Garces previously, a canyon fifty feet deep and a thousand feet long; the other, about eight miles down, called San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner. There were four padres; Garces and Barraneche at the upper station, and Diaz and Moreno at the lower. Each place had eight or ten soldiers, a few colonists, and a few labourers. The Spaniards were obliged to appropriate some of the best lands to till for the support of the missions, and this, together with the general poverty of the establishments when he had expected something fine, disgusted Palma and exasperated him and the other Yumas. In June, 1781, Captain Moncada, lieutenant-governor of Lower California, arrived with soldiers and recruits en route for California settlements, and encamped opposite Yuma. After some of these people had been sent forward or back as the plans demanded, Moncada remained at the camp with a few of his soldiers. No one suspected the tornado which was brewing. All the life of the camp, of the missions, and of the Yumas went on with the same apparent smoothness, but it was only a delusion suddenly and horribly dispelled on the fateful 17th of July. Without a sign preliminary to the execution of their wrath, Captain Palma and all his band threw piety to the winds, and annihilated with clubs Moncada's camp and most of the men in the two missions. Garces and his assistant, Barraneche, were at first spared. Even the conscience of Talma hesitated to murder the good and amiable Garces, who had never been to him and his people anything but a kind and generous friend, but the rabble declared these two were the worst of all, and under this pressure Palma yielded. It was the last terrible scene of this act in the life-drama we are following. The lights were out, the curtain down. Military expeditions were sent to avenge the massacre, but they might as well have chased the stars. The missions on the Colorado were ended. Never again was an attempt made to found one. The desert relapsed into its former complete subjection to the native tribes, and the indifferent Colorado swept on to the conflict with the sea-waves as if neither white man nor Amerind had ever touched its waters. Nearly half a century passed before the face of a white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a broom.



CHAPTER V

Breaking the Wilderness—Wanderings of the Trappers and Fur Traders—General Ashley in Green River Valley, 1824—Pattie along the Grand Canyon, 1826—Lieut. Hardy, R.N., in a Schooner on the Lower Colorado, 1826—Jedediah Smith, Salt Lake to San Gabriel, 1826—Pattie on the Lower Colorado in Canoes, 1827-28.

As the "sweet Afton" of old gently flowing among its green braes compares with the fierce Colorado, so do those earnest padres who so faithfully tried to plant their cross in the waste places, as sketched in the chapter just closed with the martyrdom of Garces, compare with the new set of actors that now appear, as the development of this drama of the wilderness continues. The former fitted well into the strange scenery; they became apart of it; they fraternised with the various tribes native to the land, and all things together went forward with pictorial harmony. They were like a few mellow figures blended skilfully into the deep tones of an ancient canvas. But now the turbulent spirit of the raging river itself pervades the new-comers who march imperiously upon the mighty stage with the heavy tread of the conqueror, out of tune with the soft old melody; temporising with nothing; with a heedless stroke, like the remorseless hand of Fate, obliterating all obstacles to their progress. Not theirs the desire to save natives from perdition; rather to annihilate them speedily as useless relics of a bygone time. They are savages among savages; quite as interesting and delightful in their way as the older occupants of the soil. It became in reality the conflict of the old and the new, and then was set the standard by which the native tribes have ever since been measured and dealt with.

The inevitable was simply coming to pass: one more act in the world-play of continental subjugation to the European. The United States, born in privation and blood, were growing into a nation eager for expansion, and by 1815 they had already ventured beyond the Mississippi, having purchased from France all territory north of Red River, the Arkansas, and the 42nd parallel, as far as the unsettled British boundary and the disputed region of Oregon. Naturally, then, Americans wanted to know what was to be found in this vast tract unknown to them, and when a few bold spirits pushed out to the great mountains it was discovered that fur-bearing animals existed in multitude. In the trapping of these and the trading in their pelts a huge industry sprang up. In this trade future millionaires laid their foundations.

The beaver were then the most profitable of all, and they were the most abundant. The pelts were estimated by "packs," each of which consisted of about eighty skins, weighing one hundred pounds, and worth in the mountains from three hundred to five hundred dollars. The profits were thus speedy and very great. In the search for the richest rewards the trapper continually pushed farther and farther away from the "States," encroaching at length on the territory claimed by Spain, a claim to be soon (1821) adopted by the new-born Mexican Republic. Trespassing on the tribal rights of Blackfoot, Sioux, Ute, or any other did not enter into any one's mind as something to be considered. Thus, rough-shod the trapper broke the wilderness, fathomed its secret places, traversed its trails and passes, marking them with his own blood and more vividly with that of the natives. Incidentally, by right of their discoveries and occupation of the wilderness, much of it became by the law of nations a part of the lands of the United States, though still nominally claimed by Mexico. Two years after the return of the famous Lewis-and-Clark expedition, Andrew Henry "discovered" South Pass (1808), and led his party through it into the Green River* Valley. His discovery consisted, like many others of the time, in following up the bison trails and the highways of the natives. The latter, of course, knew every foot of the whole country; each tribe its own special lands and more or less into and across those of its neighbours.

* The name Green River was used as early as 1824, and was probably derived from the name of the early trapper. Till about 1835 it was usually called by the Crow name, Seedskeedee.

By the time the third decade of the nineteenth century was fairly begun the trappers were crossing in considerable numbers from the headwaters of the Missouri and the Platte into the valley of the Colorado and the Columbia, and as early as 1824 one of the most brilliant figures of this epoch, General Ashley,* having previously organised a fur-trading company in St. Louis, then the centre of all Western commerce, had established himself in Green River Valley with a large band of expert trappers which included now famous names like Henry, Bridger, Fitzpatrick, Green, Sublet, and Beckwourth. Provo (or Provost) was already encamped in Brown's Hole. One of Ashley's principal camps was what they called the "rendezvous" (there were a great many French-Canadians engaged in the fur business, and hence numerous French words were in common use among the trappers of the period), just above "The Suck," on Green River. This Suck was at the entrance to Flaming Gorge, as it has since been named. Beckwourth says of this: "The current, at a small distance from our camp, became exceedingly rapid, and drew toward the centre from each shore." The river here narrows suddenly and attacks a high ridge. Doubling around a point to the left and then as suddenly to the right, the swift water or "Suck" slackens up in the quieter reach of Flaming Gorge. In their journeys after beaver the Ashley party had been able to go into this gorge and the two following ones, Horseshoe and Kingfisher, and had doubtless trapped in them. Here were many beaver, and Ashley drew the inference that as many existed below in the deeper canyon. Though he had discovered the dangerous character of the river he decided to build boats and set forth on the current in order to trap the canyon, the length of which he did not know and underestimated. A purpose of reaching St. Louis by this route has been attributed to Ashley, but as Hunt and others some years before understood this to be a stream on whose lower waters Spaniards lived, Ashley doubtless had the same information, and from that he would have known that it was no practicable route to St. Louis. Beckwourth, who relates the story of the trip,** makes no suggestion of any far-off destination, nor does he say they took their packs along, as they would have done if going to a commercial centre. It seems to have been purely a trapping expedition, and was probably the very first attempt to navigate Green River. They took along few provisions, expecting to find beaver plentiful to the end of the canyon, but after a few miles the beaver were absent, and, having preserved none of the meat, the party began to suffer for food. They were six days without eating, and, the high precipitous walls running ever on and on, they became disheartened, or, in Western phrase, "demoralised," and proposed to cast lots to find which should make food for the others, a proposition which horrified Ashley, and he begged them to hold out longer, assuring them that the walls must soon break and enable them to escape. They had not expected so long a gorge. Red Canyon is twenty-five miles and, with the three above, the unbroken canyon is about thirty-five miles. Under the circumstances the canyon seemed interminable and the cliffs insurmountable. The latter grow more precipitous toward the lower end, and scaling would be a difficult feat for a man well fed and strong, though well-nigh hopeless for any weakened by lack of proper food. At last, however, an opening appeared. Here they discovered Provo encamped with an abundance of provisions, so their troubles were quickly over. The opening they had arrived at was probably Brown's Hole. There is only one other place that might be called an opening, and this is a small park-like break on the right side of the river, not far above Brown's Hole, formerly called Little Brown's Hole and also Ashley Park. The Ashley men would have had a hard climb to get out of this place, and it is not probable that Provo would have climbed into it, as no beaver existed there. It seems positive, then, that Ashley came to Provo in Brown's Hole. Thus he did not "make his perillous way through Brown's Hole," as one author says, because he ended his journey with the beginning of that peaceful park. They lost two of their boats and several guns in Red Canyon, and Ashley left there a mark to identify the time of his passage. He wrote his name and the date, 1825, on a large rock above a sharp fall, which was (later, 1869,) named in his honour. I saw this inscription in 1871 and made a careful copy of it, which is given here. See also the illustration of Ashley Falls on page 113. The location of it is just west of C in the words "Red Canon" on the map, page 109. In the canyon of Lodore, at the foot of Disaster Falls, we found some wreckage in the sand, a bake-oven, tin plates, knives, etc., which Powell first saw in 1869, but these could not have belonged to Ashley's party, for plainly Ashley did not enter Lodore at all. It was evidently from some later expedition which probably started from Brown's Park, in the days of Fort Davy Crockett.

* Wm. Henry Ashley, born in Virginia, 1778; went to Missouri 1802; general of militia; elected first governor 1820; went into fur trade 1822 with Andrew Henry; elected to Congress 1831; twice re-elected; continued in office till March 4, 1837.—Chittenden.

** Life and Adventures of James P. Beckwourth, edited by T. D. Bonner. Beckwourth was always called "Beckwith" in the mountains, but this was probably only a perversion of the original, though Chittenden seems to think he only assumed the former spelling on publishing his book.

Provo had plenty of horses, and Ashley and his men joined him going out to Salt Lake, where Provo had come from.

The year following Ashley's attempt to trap Green River was a most eventful one in the history of the Colorado. Time appeared to be ripe for great journeys. The Mexicans outside of California were more amiably inclined, and granted privileges to trappers in New Mexico. Two men who were among the first to push their way into New Mexico were James O. Pattie and his father, and the narrative of their experiences as told by the younger Pattie is one of the most thrilling and interesting books of Western adventure ever published.* They had trapped on the Gila, or "Helay," as they called it in 1825, and the next year they went back there with a party, trapping the Gila and its tributaries with gratifying success.** Working their way down the Gila, they eventually reached its junction with what they called Red River, the Great Colorado. Following up the Colorado, probably the first white men to travel here since the time of Garces, they rode through a camp of Coco-Maricopas, who ran frightened away, and the Pattie party, passing them by as if they were mere chaff, camped four miles farther on, where they were visited by about one hundred, "all painted red in token of amity." Farther up they entered the Mohave country. When they met some of the inhabitants they "marched directly through their village, the women and children screaming and hiding themselves in their huts." Three miles above, the Patties camped, and a number of the Mohaves soon came to see them. They did not like the looks of the chief, who made signs that he wanted a horse as payment for the privilege of trapping in his domain. As the trappers recognised no rights on the part of the natives, they peremptorily refused, whereat the chief drew himself erect with a stern and fierce air and sent an arrow into a tree, at the same time "raising his hand to his mouth and making their peculiar yell." The captain of the Pattie band replied by taking his gun and shooting the arrow in two. Driven out of the camp the following day, the chief shot a horse as he rode past it and was himself instantly pierced with four rifle balls.

* The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, of Kentucky, etc., edited by Timothy Flint. Cincinnati, E. H. Flint, 1833. There is a copy in the Astor Library, New York.

* There were two classes of trappers, the free and those in the employ of some company. The Patties belonged to the former class.

A band of his followers, armed, of course, with only bows and arrows, next day made a concerted attack, but were cut down by the rifles and fine marksmanship of the Americans. As these Mohaves had been good friends to Garces, and afterwards treated Americans well till they were instigated by the Spaniards to fight, it is probable that a somewhat more conciliatory approach might have avoided the trouble this party experienced.

Farther up they reached the "Shuenas," who had apparently never before heard the report of a gun, and on the 25th of March they arrived at what we now call Bill Williams Fork. A party was sent up this stream to trap. As they did not return next day according to the plan, scouts were dispatched, who found the bodies cut to pieces and spitted before a great fire.

On the 28th of March they came to a place on the river 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 beneath us." This was probably Black Canyon; they are the first white men on record to reach it. They now took a remarkable journey of fourteen days, but unfortunately little detail is given, probably because Pattie'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 Canyon at its widest part. By April 10th 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 clothing. 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 mentioned 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 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. Encountering a good deal of trouble in high winds and shoals he finally reached a vein of reddish water which he surmised came from "Red River," and at two o'clock of the same day he saw an opening ahead which he took to be the mouth of the river. An hour later all doubt was dispelled, and by half-past six he came to anchor for the night at the entrance, believing the tide to be at nearly low water. "In the middle of the night," he says, "I was awakened by the dew and the noise of jackals. I took this opportunity of examining the lead which had been left hanging alongside, to see what water we had. What was my astonishment to find only a foot and a half. The crew was sound asleep. Not even the sentinel was able to keep his eyes open." They got off without damage at the rise of the tide, but the next day misfortune awaited the schooner. The helmsman neglecting his duty for a moment as they were working up the stream, the vessel lost headway, and the fierce current immediately swept her, stern foremost, into the bank and broke the rudder. After much labour the Bruja was finally again placed in the stream, where they waited for slack water, expecting then to ship the rudder. "But in the Rio Colorado," he declares with italics, "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SLACK WATER. Before the ebb has finished running the flood commences, boiling up full eighteen inches above the surface and roaring like the rapids of Canada." Had he known what we now know he might have found a simile nearer his position at the moment. Finding he could make no further progress with the a schooner, he took a small boat and continued his voyage in it, though not for any great distance, as he returned to the vessel at night. Five or six thousand Yumas were seen, but they were entirely friendly. He thought the mouth of the Gila was below his stranded vessel, but he was mistaken in this, for it was in reality a great many miles farther up. What he took for the Gila was the main Colorado itself, and what he thought was the Colorado was only a bayou or flood-water channel. It being midsummer the river was at flood. The bayou is still called the False or Hardy's Colorado.

* "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. 98.

After eight days of waiting they at last got their rudder shipped, the vessel on the tide, and went back down the stream, one of the Yuma women swimming after them till taken on board. She was landed at the first opportunity. The interpreter told Hardy his was the first vessel that had ever visited the river, and that they took it for a large bird. The lieutenant was evidently not posted on the history of the region, and the Yuma was excusable for not having a memory that went 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 Patties and their adherents arrived at the Colorado, where their horses were stampeded by the tribe living at the mouth of the Gila, the "Umeas." They were left without a single animal, a most serious predicament in a wild country. The elder Pattie counselled pursuit on foot to recapture the horses or die in the attempt. But the effort was fruitless. They then made their way back to their camp, devoured their last morsel of meat, placed their guns on a raft, and swam the river to annihilate the village they saw on the opposite bank. The Yumas, however, had anticipated this move, and the trappers found there only one poor old man, whom they spared. Setting fire to every hut in the village, except that of the old man, they had the small satisfaction of watching them burn. There was now no hope either of regaining the horses or of fighting the Yumas, so they devoted their attention, to building canoes for the purpose of escaping by descending the Colorado. For this they possessed tools, trappers often having occasion to use a canoe in the prosecution of their work. They soon had finished eight, dugouts undoubtedly, though Pattie does not say so, and they already had one which Pattie had made on the Gila. Uniting these by platforms in pairs they embarked upon them with all their furs and traps, leaving their saddles hidden on the bank.

On the 9th of December (1827)* they started, probably the first navigators of this part of the river since Alarcon, 287 years before. That night they set forty traps and were rewarded with thirty-six beaver. Such good luck decided them to travel slowly with the current, about four miles an hour, "and trap the river clear." The stream was about two hundred to three hundred yards wide, with bottoms extending back from six to ten miles, giving good camp-grounds all along. With abundance of fat beaver meat and so many pelts added to their store they forgot their misfortunes and began to count on reaching the Spanish settlements they thought existed near the mouth of the river. Sometimes their traps yielded as many as sixty beaver in a night, and finally they were obliged to halt and make another canoe. So they went slowly down, occasionally killing a couple of hostile natives, or deer, panthers, foxes, or wild-cats. One animal is described as like an African leopard, the first they had ever seen. At length they came to a tribe much shorter of stature than the Yumas, and friendly. These were probably Cocopas. Not a patch of clothing existed in the whole band, and Pattie's men gave the women some old shirts, intimating, as well as they could, that they ought to wear some covering. These people were well formed, and many of the women had exceptionally fine figures if the judgment of the trappers can be trusted in this respect. When a gun was fired they either fell prostrate or ran away, so little did they know about firearms. The chief had a feast of young dog prepared for his guests, who partook of it with reluctance. All communication was by signs, and when the chief imitated the beating of surf and drew a cow and a sheep in the sand, pointing west, they thought they were at last nearing the longed-for Spanish settlements, and went on their way joyfully. Little did they imagine that the settlements the chief described were far off on the Californian coast.

* The reader may think I introduce too many year-dates but I have found most books so lacking in this regard that I prefer to err on the other side.

The new year, 1828, came in and still they were going down the river, taking many beaver. As a New Year's greeting a shower of arrows from a new tribe, the Pipis, fell amongst them. The trappers killed six of them at one volley, and the rest ran away, leaving twenty-three beautiful longbows behind. The only clothing the dead men had on was snail-shells fastened to the ends of their long locks of hair. The trappers now began to seek more anxiously for the mythical settlements. "A great many times each day," says Pattie, "we bring our crafts to the shore and go out to see if we cannot discover the tracks of horses and cattle." On the 18th they thought some inundated river entering was the cause of a slackening of the current, and finally they began to rig oars, thinking they would now be obliged to work to get on down-stream, but presently, to their surprise, the current doubled its rate and they were going along at six miles an hour. None of them had ever had any experience with tides, and they therefore failed to fathom the real cause of these singular changes of speed. Suddenly, as they were descending, people of the same tribe they had fired on stood on the shore and shouted, making signs for them to land, that their boats would be capsized, but, thinking it a scheme for robbery and murder, they kept on, though they refrained from shooting. Late in the evening they landed, making their camp on a low point where the canoes with their rich cargoes were tied to some trees. Pattie's father took the first watch, and in the night, hearing a roaring noise that he thought indicated a sudden storm, he roused his companions, and all was prepared for a heavy rain, when, instead, to their great consternation, the camp was inundated by "a high ridge of water over which came the sea current combing down like water over a mill-dam." The canoes were almost capsized, but this catastrophe was averted by rapid and good management. Even in the darkness, in the face of a danger unexpected and unknown, the trappers never for an instant lost their coolness and quick judgment, which was so often their salvation. Paddling the canoes under the trees, they clung to the branches, but when the tide went out the boats were all high and dry. At last the day dawned bright and fair, enabling them to see what had happened, and when the tide once more returned, they got the canoes out of the trap. They now proceeded with the ebb tide, stopping with the beginning of the flood, constantly on the lookout for the Spanish settlements, and not till the 28th, when they saw before them such a commotion of waters that their small craft would be instantly engulfed, and wide sandy stretches, perfectly barren, all round, did they realise what a mistake they had made.

"The fierce billows," says Pattie, "shut us in from below, the river current from above, and murderous savages on either hand on the shore. We had a rich cargo of furs, a little independence for each one of us could we have disposed of them among the Spanish people whom we expected to have found here. There were no such settlements. Every side on which we looked offered an array of danger, famine, or death. In this predicament what were furs to us." In order to escape they worked their way back up the river as far as they could by rowing, poling, and towing, but on February 10th they met a great rise which put a stop to progress. They now abandoned the canoes, buried the furs in deep pits, and headed for the coast settlements of California. After many vicissitudes, which I am unable to relate here, they finally arrived, completely worn out, at the Spanish mission of St. Catherine. Now they believed their troubles were over, and that after recuperating they could go back, bring in their furs, dispose of them handsomely, and reap the reward of all their privation and toil. Not so, however. Indeed, the worst of their trials was now to come. Before they comprehended the intention the Spanish official had seized their rifles and the men were locked up with only the commonest fare to relieve their suffering. Cruelty followed cruelty, but they believed it was the mistake of the minor officers, and appealed to the general in charge at San Diego, expecting an order from him for release. Instead of this they were marched under guard to San Diego, where each was confined in a separate room, frustrating their plan to recapture their arms and fight their way out. Pattie's father presently became ill, and no amount of entreaty was sufficient to gain permission for the son to see him even for a moment. He died in his cell. After much argument and the intercession of some of the minor officers, Pattie was permitted liberty long enough to attend the funeral. At last the men were allowed to go back for the furs, which no doubt the wily general intended to confiscate, Pattie himself being retained as a hostage. But the furs had been ruined by a rise of the river. Smallpox then began to rage on the coast, and through this fact Pattie finally gained his freedom. Having with him a quantity of vaccine virus, he was able to barter skill in vaccinating the populace for liberty, though it was tardily and grudgingly granted. He was able, at length, to get away from California, and returned, broken in health and penniless, by way of the City of Mexico, to his old home near Cincinnati, after six years of extraordinary travel through the wildest portions of the Rocky Mountain region and the extreme Southwest.

In the year 1826, an afterwards famous personage appeared in the valley of the Colorado, on the Gila branch, being no less than Kit Carson,* one of the greatest scouts and trappers of all. At this time he was but seventeen years old, though in sagacity, knowledge, and skill soon the equal of any trapper in the field. In 1827, Ewing Young, another noted trapper, having been driven away from the Gila by the natives, organised a company of forty men to go back and punish them, which meant to kill all they could see, innocent or guilty. Carson was one of this party. They succeeded in killing fifteen of the offenders, after which slight diversion they went on down the stream, trapping it as they went, but finally, running short of provisions, they had to eat horses. Arriving among the Mohaves, they obtained food from them, and proceeded across to San Gabriel Mission, to which place after trapping up the Sacramento Valley, they again returned, in season to assist the Spaniards to reduce the natives around the settlement to submission. This was accomplished by the simple method of killing one-third of them.

* Life of Kit Carson, by Charles Burdett. There are several Lives by other biographers.

Limited space prohibits my recounting the exploits of even the smaller part of the trappers of this period, but with what follows I believe the reader will possess a sufficient picture of the life of the Rocky Mountain Trapper at this time.* A trail from Santa Fe to California was opened by way of what is now Gunnison Valley on Green River, and thence west by about the same route that Jedediah Smith followed, that is, down the Virgen River, by William Wolfskill who went out by this route to Los Angeles, in 1830.** There were trappers now in every part of the wilderness, excepting always the canyons of the Green and Colorado, which were given a wide berth as their forbidding character became better known; and as time went on the stories of those who had here and there looked into the angry depths, or had essayed a tilt with the furious rapids at one or two northern points, were enlarged upon, and, like all unknown things, the terrors became magnified.

* The reader is referred for exact details to the admirable work by H. M. Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West.

** H. H. Bancroft says 1831-2.

It was in 1832 that Captain Bonneville entered Green River Valley, but as his exploits belong more properly to the valley of the Columbia, I shall not attempt to mention any of them here, referring the reader to the delightful account by Washington Irving.

In May, 1839, a traveller who was a careful observer, Thomas J. Farnham, went from New Mexico across the mountains to Brown's Hole en route for Oregon, and a portion of his narrative* is of deep interest in this connection, because his guide, Kelly, gave him some account of the Green and Colorado, which reflects the amount of real knowledge then possessed concerning the canyon-river.

* Travels in the Great Western Prairies, the Anahuac and Rocky Mountains, and in the Oregon Territory, by Thomas J. Farnham. There is a copy in the library of Columbia University, New York.

"The Grand unites with the Seedskeedee or Green River to form the Colorado of the West. From the junction of these branches the Colorado has a general course from the north-east to the south-west of seven hundred miles to the head of the Gulf of California. Four hundred of this seven hundred miles is an almost unbroken chasm of kenyon, with perpendicular sides hundreds of feet in height, at the bottom of which the waters rush over continuous cascades. This kenyon terminates thirty [should be three hundred] miles above the gulf. To this point the river is navigable. The country on each side of its whole course is a rolling desert of loose brown earth, on which the rains and the dews never fall. A few years since, two Catholic missionaries and their servants on their way from the mountains to California, attempted to descend the Colorado. They have never been seen since the morning they commenced their fatal undertaking.

"A party of trappers and others made a strong boat and manned it well with the determination of floating down the river to take beaver that they supposed lived along its banks. But they found themselves in such danger after entering the kenyon that with might and main they thrust their trembling boat ashore and succeeded in leaping upon the crags and lightening it before it was swallowed in the dashing torrent."

They had a difficult time in getting out of the canyon, but finally, by means of ropes and by digging steps with their rifle barrels, they reached the open country and made their way back to the starting-point. This was, possibly, the expedition which was wrecked in Lodore, after Ashley's Red Canyon trip. I have not succeeded in finding any other account that would fit that place. Arriving at Fort Davy Crockett, in Brown's Park, he describes it as "a hollow square of one-storey log cabins, with roofs and floor of mud. Around these we found the conical skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers who were away on their fall hunt, and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians who had preceded their tribe to this their winter haunt. Here also were the lodges of Mr. Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse, and buffalo robes spread on the ground his counter, on which he displayed his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish-hooks, and whiskey. In exchange for these articles he received beaver skins from trappers, money from travellers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as one would believe, Mr. Robinson drives a very snug little business. And, indeed, when all the independent trappers are driven by the appearance of winter into this delightful retreat, and the whole Snake village, two thousand or three thousand strong, impelled by the same necessity, pitch their lodges around the fort and the dances and merrymakings of a long winter are thoroughly commenced, there is no want of customers."

With this happy picture of frontier luxury in the trapper period I will close the scene. Unwittingly, but no less thoroughly, the trappers had accomplished a mission: they had opened the gates of the wilderness. Two-thirds of these intrepid spirits had left their bones on the field, but theirs had been the privilege of seeing the priscan glory of the wilderness.

Note.—Near the emigrant crossing of Green River, in Wyoming, early in 1849, a party bound for California discovered an old scow ferry-boat, twelve feet long and about six feet wide, with two oars. Deciding to complete their journey by water they embarked. Later they built canoes. They were: William Lewis Manly (aged 29); M. S. McMahon; Charles and Joseph Hazelrig; Richard Field; Alfred Watson; and John Rogers. Manly's account appears entirely truthful. He tells of canyons, rapids, etc., till near the mouth of Uinta River they met the Ute chief Walker (Wakar) who explained by signs that the fury of the river below was worse than above, and all but two gave up. These two, McMahon and Field, stopped with the Utes, intending to continue. The others went to Salt Lake. Wakar (whom McMahon calls "the generous old chief") repeated his warnings. Field lost courage, and finally McMahon also abandoned the desire. Manly's story (first published in the Santa Clara Valley Weekly) is given in his book Death Valley in '49. The volume was edited by the late Henry L. Brainard, head of the San Jose, California, company which, in 1894, published it. It was Mr. Brainard who secured the story from Manly for the Weekly. Mrs. Brainard says of Manly: "He was one of the dearest old men; kind, loving, gentle, as one seldom meets in this world. It was a pleasure to meet and know him. His character was unblemished." At one place which I identify as lower Disaster Falls, Canyon of Lodore, they came to a deserted camp, "a skiff and some heavy cooking utensils, with a notice posted on an alder [box-elder] tree, saying that they had found the river route impracticable... and were about to start overland to Salt Lake." Manly took down the signed names of this party but his diary was later lost by fire. Apparently the cooking utensils, etc., were the same we saw twenty-two years later at that place and thought were wreckage (see p. 255). Manly died February 5, 1903, and is buried at Merced, California.



CHAPTER VI

Fremont, the Pathfinder—Ownership of the Colorado—The Road of the Gold Seekers—First United States Military Post, 1849—Steam Navigation—Captain Johnson Goes to the Head of Black Canyon.

The great Western wilderness was now no longer "unknown" to white men. By the year 1840 the American had traversed it throughout, excepting the canyons of the Colorado, which yet remained, at least below the mouth of Grand River, almost as much of a problem as before the fur trade was born. Like some antediluvian monster the wild torrent stretched a foaming barrier miles on miles from the mountains of the north to the seas of the south, fortified in a rock-bound lair, roaring defiance at conquistadore, padre, and trapper alike.