Fort Mojave, some four miles or so below Hardyville, on the east bank of the Colorado, was a rude post, most uncomfortable every way. It had been established originally in 1860, abandoned in 1861, but re-occupied in 1864, and maintained since then. We found it hot, and dusty, and miserable, even in April; and could well imagine what it must be in July and August. At Prescott, we were some six thousand feet above the sea; but here we had got down to only about eleven hundred, and the change was most perceptible. Here were a handful of troops, and two or three officers, all praying for the day when they might be ordered elsewhere, assured that fortune could send them to no worse post, outside of Alaska. One officer had his wife along, a lady delicately bred, from Pittsburg, Pa., and this was her first experience of Army life. When we first arrived, she tried to talk cheerily, and bore up bravely for awhile; but before we left, she broke down in tears, and confessed to her utter loneliness and misery. No wonder, when she was the only white woman there, no other within a hundred miles or more; and no newspaper or mail even, except once a month or fortnight, as things happened to be.
Hardyville itself was then more of a name than place, consisting chiefly of a warehouse and quartz-mill, with a few adobe shanties. Near Hardyville, some ten or twenty miles away in the outlying mountains, there were several mines—gold, silver, and copper—of more or less richness, and the mill was located here to take advantage of the two great essentials, wood and water. The mill, however, was standing idle, like most enterprises in Arizona, and but little was doing in the mines. Mr. Hardy himself, a hard-working energetic man, and the Ben Holliday or Gen. Banning of that region, controlling all its business, including Government contracts, from the Colorado to Prescott and beyond, was getting out some ore, and specimens we saw at his store were certainly very handsome. He said there were "leads" in the neighboring mountains of exceeding richness, and indeed here and at other similar points along the Colorado, as at La Paz, Aubrey City, El Dorado Cañon, etc., there seemed the best chances for mining of anywhere in Arizona. Here were wood (drift-wood, in which the Colorado abounds) and water, the two great needs, usually wanting elsewhere in Arizona; and the Colorado itself, it would seem, ought to afford reasonably cheap and quick transportation, if the steamboats on it were constructed and run with proper enterprise and efficiency.
The great drawback to Arizona then, overshadowing perhaps all others, not excepting the Apaches, was the perfectly frightful and ruinous cost of transportation. To reach any mining-district there from California, except those along the Colorado, you had to travel from three to five hundred miles through what are practically deserts; and for every ton of freight carried into or out of the Territory, you were called on to pay from three to five cents per pound, per hundred miles, in coin. Golconda, itself, could not flourish under such circumstances, much less Arizona—which is scarcely a Golconda. The patent and palpable remedy for all this, was either a railroad or the speedy and regular navigation of the Colorado. It seemed nonsense to say that the Colorado could not be navigated, and that too at rates reasonably cheap. It looked no worse than the Ohio and the Missouri, and like western rivers ordinarily; and there appeared but small hope for Arizona very speedily, until she availed herself to the full of its actual advantages. With the alleged mines along the Colorado, from Ft. Yuma to El Dorado, in good operation, her population, as it increased, would naturally overflow to other districts; and, in the end, arid Arizona would become reasonably prosperous. But, like all other commonwealths, she must have a base to stand on and work from. That base seemed naturally and necessarily the Colorado River, indifferent as it was. And all attempts to develop herself, except from that, in the absence of a railroad, seemed likely to end like the efforts of the man, who tried to build a pyramid with the apex downward. History declares it was not a "success."
Bidding good-bye to our friends at Fort Mojave, we crossed the Colorado on a rude flat-boat, on the evening of April 18th, and proceeded three miles to Beaver Lake where we camped for the night, in order to get a good start next day. We dismissed our escort at Fort Mojave, as no longer necessary; and, Gov. McCormick and wife having left us at Prescott, our little party was now reduced to two and our drivers. Col. Carter, Secretary of the Territory, had accompanied us from Prescott to Mojave; but here he left us for a trip up the Colorado, intending to push into the Big Cañon, if possible. Subsequently, I learned, he failed in doing this; but the fault was not his, and, for the present, we bade him speedy success and a safe return.
From Fort Mojave, on the Colorado, to Los Angelos was still about three hundred miles, and this we accomplished in eight days. The valley or great basin of the Colorado extends most of the distance, and of the intervening country, as a whole, the most that can be said of it is, that it is an absolute desert of extinct volcanoes and outstretched sand-plains, fit only for tarantulas and centipedes, rattlesnakes and Indians. As far as could be seen, I think this a fair and truthful statement of pretty much all that region to Cajon Pass, and don't see how it can well be objected to, by any honest mind. Its changes of elevation are, indeed, something very curious. At Fort Mojave, on the banks of the Colorado, you are only about a thousand feet above the sea. Thence, for ten or twelve miles, you steadily ascend, until you get where the view of the Colorado Valley proper becomes something really sublime—a barren ocean, a sea of desolation, with a line of living green meandering through the centre—and at Pai-Ute Hill, only some thirty miles from the Colorado, you reach an elevation of some four thousand feet. At Government Holes, indeed, you get up to 5,204 feet; but at Soda Lake, about a hundred miles from Fort Mojave, you descend again to 1,075 feet, or seventy-four feet lower than the Colorado itself.[23] From here you climb back to 1,852 feet at Camp Cady, some forty miles from Soda Lake; 2,678 feet at Cottonwood Ranch, some eighty miles from Soda Lake; and gradually get up again to 5,000 feet at Cajon Pass, about one hundred and twenty miles from Soda Lake. These ascents and descents usually are not sudden, nor indeed much perceptible; but gradually you roll up and down over a vast desert region, where the sun was already (in April) intensely hot by day, and getting to be fairly warm at night.
In the long drives by day, sometimes forty and fifty miles—to reach water—the heat and glare from the sand became terrible to the eyes, and twice we drove all night, lying by in the day, to avoid this. By day, we usually saw no live thing, except here and there a stray buzzard, or scampering lizard, or horned toad. By night, we would hear the rattlesnakes hiss and rattle, as we drove along—our "outfit" as we rattled by, I suppose, disturbing their quiet siestas, or moonlight promenades. It was too early in the season, however, to be troubled much with such interesting acquaintances as rattlesnakes, tarantulas, centipedes, etc. They were but just beginning to come out of their holes, and we were glad to escape from the country before they ventured forth much. We saw, indeed, some centipedes, and killed several rattlesnakes. One night one of the party woke up, and found something reposing snugly on the outside of his blankets. Giving it a kick and sling from underneath, it proved to be a snake, and answered him back from the place where it landed, with the usual inevitable hiss and defiant rattle. Another night, at Soda Lake, while sleeping by the rocks there, a rattlesnake crawled under the bottom blankets, and in the morning when the owner of them began to yawn and stretch himself, preparatory to getting up, his snakeship from beneath hissed, and rattled, and protested, as badly as a northern copperhead or a southern rebel at the Proclamation of Emancipation, or the Reconstruction measures of Congress. Of course, we all slept on the ground every night, ex necessitate; but, after this, we usually retired with all our clothes and tallest boots on!
Pai-Ute hill, so-called (before spoken of), is really a sharp and ugly little mountain, up which we toiled slowly and wearily. In rounding an angle of the road, soon after beginning the ascent, one of our ambulances sliding struck a rock, and soon like the famous "One Hoss Shay," ended in a "general spill!" There could hardly have been a more thorough collapse of spokes and felloes—everything seemed to go to pieces—and it could hardly have occurred in a worse place. It was a wild and desolate cañon, barren and rocky, miles away from every human habitation; yet there was nothing for it, but to leave the driver in charge, and the rest of us proceed on to Camp Rock Springs, whence we sent an army-wagon back to gather up the remains and bring them on. Camp Rock Springs itself was a forlorn military post, consisting of one officer and perhaps a dozen men, guarding the Springs and the road there. The officer was quartered in a natural cave in the hillside, and his men had "hutted" themselves out on the sand the best they could. No glory there, nor much chance for military fame; but true patriots and heroes were they, to submit to such privations. Too many of our frontier posts are akin to this, and little do members of Congress east, who know only "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war," imagine what army-life out there really is. It is a poor place for fuss and feathers, gilt epaulets and brass buttons; and our "Home Guard," holiday Militia east, so fond of parading up and down our peaceful streets, with full rations and hotel quarters, would soon acquire for soldiering there only a rare and infinite disgust. Yet these are the nurseries of the Army, and from such hard schools we graduated a Grant and Sherman, Sheridan and Thomas.
Soda Lake, already mentioned, is simply a dried-up lake, or sea, whose salts of soda effloresce and whiten the ground, like snow, for miles in every direction. The country there is a vast basin, rimmed around with desolate hills and mountains, and during the rainy season a considerable body of water, indeed, collects here. Soon, however, evaporation does its work, and the Lake proper subsides to little or nothing, worth speaking of. When we were there, it was said to be twenty miles long, by four or five wide, though of course everywhere very marshy or shallow. Skirting the borders of it, we reached a rocky bluff on (I think) the northern shore, and there found a noble spring of excellent water, welling up of from unknown depths, within a stone's throw of the soda deposits. Here was the usual halting-place, and as we had driven all night, we went into camp on arriving there, soon after sunrise. It was Sunday, April 21st; there was no house or even hut there; no person or living thing; and what with the heat, and glare, and awful desolation—our weariness, fatigue, and sense of isolation—I think it was about the most wretched and miserable day I ever spent anywhere. To crown all, during the night before, while jogging along, we had descried what we supposed to be an Indian camp-fire, off to the south of the road some distance; we had driven quietly but hastily on, getting the utmost out of our jaded mules; but whether the Red Skins were asleep, or had discovered and were now dogging us, awaiting their opportunity, we were blissfully ignorant. We passed the hours away, as best we could, sleeping and watching in turn; but the next morning, bright and early, we were up and off for Camp Cady. We would have departed, indeed, by night; but the route lay largely up the disgusting cañon of the Mojave, and was impracticable in the dark. This was the only sign of hostile Indians we saw en route from the Colorado. We could hardly call it a genuine "scare;" and yet were not greatly grieved, when we found they had given us a wide berth.
Some fifteen or twenty miles beyond Soda Lake, we struck the Mojave River, so-called, which there runs for several miles through a narrow and rocky cañon, much similar to that of the Hassayampa, though its walls are not so high. The road itself leads up this cañon, for lack of a better route over and through the mountains there, and on first view, it promised to be the Hassayampa over again; but, fortunately, the bottom is chiefly gravel and rock, and therefore has not the same disagreeable habit of "dropping out," when you venture over it. We found from one to two feet of water in the Mojave here, and crossed it, I suppose, at least thirty or forty times between there and Camp Cady—within say twenty miles. Two days afterward, when we crossed it for the last time, farther up, at what is called the Upper Crossing of the Mojave, we found it two feet deeper than it had been a hundred miles below, and with more than twice the volume of water. Our famous Pathfinder, in one of his great expeditions, struck it near here, at freshet height, and it is said reported the Mojave as "an important tributary of the Colorado, navigable for light-draft steamboats several months in the year." He would have been partly right, perhaps, if the Mojave indeed continued on to the Colorado. But unfortunately, it sinks in the desert, long before it gets there; and the enthusiastic explorer's "light-draft steamboats" would have to go paddling across a broad expanse of sand and rock, if they wanted to voyage from the Mojave to the Colorado, or vice versa! The Mojave, in fact, although draining the snow-capped San Bernardino Mountains, and a wide stretch of country there, is only another of the many strange anomalies that one meets with in Southern California and Arizona. Said a ranchman in that region:
"Dis yer's a quar country, stranger, you bet! All sorts of quar things out yer. Folks chop wood with a sledge-hammer, and mow grass with a hoe. Every bush bears a thorn, and every insect has a sting. The trees is pretty nigh all cactuses. The streams haint no water, except big freshets. The rivers get littler, the furder they run down. No game but rabbits, and them's big as jackasses. Some quails, but all top-knotted, and wild as greased lightning. No frost; no dew. Nobody kums yer, unless he's runnin' away. Nobody stays, unless he has to. Everybody 'vamoses the ranch,' 'cuts stick,' 'absquatulates,' as soon as he kin raise nuff 'dust' to 'git up and git' with. You bet—ye! Sure!"