The Romance of the Colorado River Part 4

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 mult.i.tude 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 a.s.sured 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 quant.i.ty. 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 h.o.m.ogeneous 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 a.s.sistant, 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 ma.s.sacre, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s: 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 mult.i.tude. 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. Trespa.s.sing 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 pa.s.ses, 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 Pa.s.s (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 princ.i.p.al 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 sh.o.r.e." 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, a.s.suring 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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sage. 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 ill.u.s.tration 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 a.s.sumed the former spelling on publis.h.i.+ng 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, pa.s.sing 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 b.a.l.l.s.

* 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 cla.s.ses of trappers, the free and those in the employ of some company. The Patties belonged to the former cla.s.s.

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 marksmans.h.i.+p 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 sh.o.r.es 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed up by the north or the south I am unable to determine. My impression is that they pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 surpa.s.sed, 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 s.h.i.+p 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 s.h.i.+pped, 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.