BOREGO SPRINGS TO LOS COYOTES 211 



and there were some that have gained a measure of 

 renown in the story of pioneering in the Southwest. 

 More recent were the autographs of a party of 

 Government surveyors, from Lieutenant Tripod, 

 Chief Engineer, down to "Pete Ortega, Chief of 

 Remuda." Slowly the mapping of the dregs of Uncle 

 Sam's domain is being completed — though it is 

 rash to call anything dregs, when date groves flour- 

 ish on what a few years ago was marked "Unknown 

 Desert," dry lake-beds yield priceless fertilizers, and 

 any day the prospector's pick may strike a blow 

 that will bring men stampeding in thousands to the 

 latest El Dorado, perhaps within rifle-shot of where 

 I stand. 



History is always fertile in debatable points for 

 students to quarrel over. Even in the history of the 

 West, short as it has been within white men's times, 

 there are matters of dispute. One of these is a ques- 

 tion as to the route of the first Spanish expedition 

 by land from Mexico to the California coast. This 

 entrada (to use the Spanish word) was led by Cap- 

 tain Juan Bautista Anza, in 1774, its object being 

 to make overland connection with the settlements 

 of San Diego and Monterey, established five years 

 earlier by Don Caspar de Portola and Fray Junipero 

 Serra. 



The party, starting from Tubac, in Sonora, 

 crossed the Colorado River on the 9th of February 

 (first picking up that stout old campaigner Fray 

 Francisco Hermenegildo Garces, who had already 

 been knocking about for years among the wild tribes 

 of the region), and made their way across the desert, 



