ave 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 northeas