[6] “It is perhaps this very long and formidable range of mountains,” says Pattie, “which has caused that this country of Red River has not been more explored,” p. 98.
A few months later a lieutenant of the British Navy, R. W. H. Hardy, travelling in Mexico, chartered in the port of Guaymas a twenty-five-ton schooner, the Bruja or Sea Witch, and sailed up the Gulf of California. Encountering a good deal of trouble in high winds and shoals he finally reached a vein of reddish water which he surmised came from “Red River,” and at two o’clock of the same day he saw an opening ahead which he took to be the mouth of the river. An hour later all doubt was dispelled, and by half-past six he came to anchor for the night at the entrance, believing the tide to be at nearly low water. “In the middle of the night,” he says, “I was awakened by the dew and the noise of jackals. I took this opportunity of examining the lead which had been left hanging alongside, to see what water we had. What was my astonishment to find only a foot and a half. The crew was sound asleep. Not even the sentinel was able to keep his eyes open.” They got off without damage at the rise of the tide, but the next day misfortune awaited the schooner. The helmsman neglecting his duty for a moment as they were working up the stream, the vessel lost headway, and the fierce current immediately swept her, stern foremost, into the bank and broke the rudder. After much labour the Bruja was finally again placed in the stream, where they waited for slack water, expecting then to ship the rudder. “But in the Rio Colorado,” he declares with italics, “there is no such thing as slack water. Before the ebb has finished running the flood commences, boiling up full eighteen inches above the surface and roaring like the rapids of Canada.” Had he known what we now know he might have found a simile nearer his position at the moment. Finding he could make no further progress with the a schooner, he took a small boat and continued his voyage in it, though not for any great distance, as he returned to the vessel at night. Five or six thousand Yumas were seen, but they were entirely friendly. He thought the mouth of the Gila was below his stranded vessel, but he was mistaken in this, for it was in reality a great many miles farther up. What he took for the Gila was the main Colorado itself, and what he thought was the Colorado was only a bayou or flood-water channel. It being midsummer the river was at flood. The bayou is still called the False or Hardy’s Colorado.
The Navajo Type.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
After eight days of waiting they at last got their rudder shipped, the vessel on the tide, and went back down the stream, one of the Yuma women swimming after them till taken on board. She was landed at the first opportunity. The interpreter told Hardy his was the first vessel that had ever visited the river, and that they took it for a large bird. The lieutenant was evidently not posted on the history of the region, and the Yuma was excusable for not having a memory that went back eighty years.[[7]] Hardy gave some of the names that still hold on that part of the river, like Howard’s Reach, where his Bruja was stranded, Montague and Gore Islands, etc.
[7] Fernando Consag entered the river, 1746, looking for mission sites, and two centuries before that was Alarçon.
The same month that Hardy sailed away from the mouth of the Colorado, August, 1826, Jedediah Smith started from Salt Lake (the 22d), passed south by Ashley’s or Utah Lake, and, keeping down the west side of the Wasatch and the High Plateaus, reached the Virgen River near the south-western corner of Utah. This he called Adams River in honour of the President of the United States. Following it south-west through the Pai Ute country for twelve days he came to its junction with what he called the Seedskeedee, knowing it to be the same stream so called in the north. This was the Colorado. Proceeding down the Colorado to the Mohaves he was kindly received by them and remained some time recuperating his stock. It may seem strange that the Mohaves should be so perverse, killing one set of trappers and treating another like old friends, but the secret of the difference on this occasion, perhaps, lay in the difference of approach. Jedediah Smith was a sort of reincarnation of the old padres, and of all the trappers the only one apparently who allowed piety or humanitarianism to sway his will. His piety was universally known. It was not an affectation, but a genuine religion which he carried about with him into the fastnesses of the mountains. Leaving the Mohaves he crossed the desert to the Californian coast, where he afterwards had trouble with the authorities, who seemed to bear a grudge against all American trappers, and who seized every opportunity to maltreat and rob them. This, however, did not prevent Smith from returning again after a visit to the northern rendezvous. But while crossing the Colorado, the Mohaves, who had meanwhile been instigated to harass Americans by the Spaniards (so it is said), attacked the expedition, killing ten men and capturing everything. Smith escaped to be afterwards killed on the Cimarron by the Comanches.
