hs 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