The Romance of the Colorado River Part 3

* 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, p.r.i.c.kly 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, tr.i.m.m.i.n.g off the outer leaves, bakes it in pits, whereby it is full of sweetness like thick mola.s.ses. 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 gra.s.s 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 gra.s.s (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; ma.s.sacres; 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, pa.s.sing 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 ma.s.s 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 t.i.tle 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 p.r.o.ne 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 ma.s.s 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 guardians.h.i.+p 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 sh.o.r.e 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 a.s.sociated 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 ma.s.sive 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 pa.s.s 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 a.s.sumed 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 h.e.l.l 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 a.s.sistance 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sisted 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 t.i.tle "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 pa.s.sed 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 impa.s.sable 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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 pa.s.s 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.