hly estimating his progress at six miles an hour for twelve hours a
day, in four days the distance covered would be about 288 miles. He says
he went up eighty-five leagues (this would be fifty-five the first time
and thirty more the second), which, counting in Mexican leagues of two
and three quarter miles each, gives a distance of 233 3/4 miles, or
about one hundred miles above the mouth of the Gila. This stream he does
not mention. He may have taken it for a mere bayou, but it appears to
be certain that he passed beyond it. He says Ulloa was mistaken by two
degrees as to his northernmost point, and that he sailed four degrees
beyond him. The meaning of this may be that he went four degrees beyond
Ulloa's false reckoning, or actually two degrees above the shoals where
Ulloa turned back. This would take him to the 34th parallel, and would
coincide with his eighty-five leagues, and also with the position of
the first mountains met with in going up the river, the Chocolate
range. Alarcon was not so inexperienced that he would have represented
eighty-five leagues on the course of the river as equalling four degrees
of latitude. Had he gone to the 36th degree he would have passed through
Black Canyon, and this is so extraordinary a feature that he could not
have failed to note it specially. When Alarcon arrived at the ships
again, he evidently had strong reason for abandoning his intention of
returning for another attempt to communicate with Coronado, and he set
sail for home. Another document says the torredo was destroying the
ships, and this is very probable. He coasted down the gulf, landing
frequently, and going long distances into the interior searching for
news of Coronado, but he learned nothing beyond what he heard on the
river.

* The tribes and bands spoken of by Alarcon cannot be identified, but
these Quicomas, or Quicamas, were doubtless the same as the Quiquimas
mentioned by Kino, 1701, and Garces, 1775. They were probably of Yuman
stock. The Cumanas were possibly Mohaves.

While he was striving to find a way of reaching the main body of
the expedition, which during this time was complacently robbing the
Puebloans on the Rio Grande, two officers of that expedition were
marching through the wilderness endeavouring to find him, and a third
was travelling toward the Grand Canyon. One of these was Don Rodrigo
Maldonado, thus bearing exactly the same name as one of Alarcon's
officers; another was Captain M