tilised a waggon-box as a boat, and the Mormons, who passed in 1847,
established a ferry. Later others operated ferries, and the valley vied
with Yuma in the matter of human activity. Fort Bridger was a place
for rest and repairs, for there was a primitive blacksmith forge and
carpenter shop. Here lived Bridger with his dark-skinned wife, chosen
from a native tribe, and Vasquez, also a famous hunter. The fort
was simply a few log cabins arranged in a hollow square protected by
palisades, through which was a gateway closed by timber doors. Simple
though it was, its value to the emigrant so far away from any settlement
can hardly be appreciated by any who have never journeyed through such a
wilderness as still existed beyond the Missouri. Could we pause here
and observe the caravans bound toward the sunset, we could hardly find
anywhere a more interesting study. There were the Californian emigrant,
and the Mormon with his wives and their push-carts, there were the
trapper and the trader, and there were the bands of natives sometimes
friendly, sometimes hovering about a caravan like a pack of hungry
wolves. There is now barely an echo of this hard period, and that echo
smothered by the rush of the express train as it dashes in an hour
or two so heedlessly across the stretches that occupied the forgotten
emigrant days or weeks. In the search for a route for the railway much
exploration was accomplished, and these expeditions, together with those
in connection with the Mexican boundary survey, added greatly to the
accumulating knowledge of the desolation enveloping the Colorado and its
branches.

The treaty of 1848 made the Gila the southern boundary, but the Gadsden
Purchase placed it farther south, as now marked. A number of expeditions
concerned in this and railway surveys traversed Arizona in the early
fifties under Whipple, Sitgreaves, Emory, and others, and the country
began to be scientifically known outside of the canyons and their
surroundings. John R. Bartlett was appointed Boundary Commissioner,
and he spent considerable time along the Gila and southwards and on the
lower Colorado in 1852 to 1854.* A few weeks before he arrived at Fort
Yuma eight of the soldiers there had a battle with the Yumas and the
eight were all killed. After this Heintzelman fought them with so much
vigour that they finally came in, begging for peace. Bartlett's first
view of the Colorado was in the early morning at a point twelve miles
bel