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 below the fort.  “It was much swollen, and rushed by with great velocity, washing away the banks and carrying with it numberless snags and trees.”  Never is the Colorado tranquil.  As they followed up the stream they suddenly found the road washed away, and were obliged to cut a new path through the underbrush.  This proved a long task, so with the pack-mules he pushed on, leaving the waggons to come later.  Antoine Leroux was the guide.  When they reached the place he had selected for a camp and had unpacked the mules, it was found that the water could not be approached because of the abruptness of the washed-out bank, so they were compelled to saddle again and go on toward the fort, though they had been riding since one o’clock in the morning.

* Personal Narrative of Exploration, by John Russell Bartlett.