impressed by the
repellant nature of the great canyon and the surroundings, and remarks:
"It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater
portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited
and undisturbed." Late in the same year that Lieutenant Ives made
his interesting and valuable exploration, another military post was
established on the Colorado, and called Fort Mohave, just about where
the California line intersects the stream. Lower down, Colorado City had
been laid out several years before (1854) under amusing circumstances.
The Yuma ferry at that time was operated by a German, thrifty after
his kind, and on the lookout for a "good thing." A party of indigent
prospectors, returning from the survey of a mine in Mexico, reached the
Arizona bank with no money to pay for the crossing, and hit upon the
ingenious plan of surveying a town site here and trading lots to the
German for a passage. Boldly commencing operations, the sight of the
work going on soon brought the ferryman over to investigate, and when he
saw the map under construction he fell headlong into the scheme, which
would, as they assured him, necessitate a steam ferry.* The result was
the immediate sale of a portion of the town to him and the exchange of
a lot for the necessary transportation to the opposite bank. Afterwards,
these parties did what they could to establish the reality of the
project, but up to date it has not been noted as a metropolis, and the
floods of 1861-2 undermined its feeble strength. Another name for it was
Arizona City.

* Across America and Asia, by Raphael Pumpelly, p. 60. The portion of
this admirable work relating to the vicinity of the Colorado River will
be found of great interest in this connection.

The year following the Ives expedition, Captain Macomb (1859) was
sent to examine the junction of the Green and Grand rivers. For a
considerable distance he followed, from Santa Fe, almost the same
trail that Escalante had travelled eighty-three years previously. Dr.
Newberry, the eminent geologist who had been with Ives, was one of
this party, and he has given an interesting account of the journey. The
region lying immediately around the place they had set out for is one of
the most formidable in all the valley of the Colorado. Looking about one
there, from the summit of the canyon walls, it seems an impossibility
for anything without the power of flight to approach the spot ex