y 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