Ex. Doc No. 41. 95 



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i.can. I sent Londeau and Martinez with orders to assume the oc- 

 cupation of trappers, and ascertain whom, and what, the man guar- 

 ded. The conference was shortj other Mexicans'advanced, and I 

 sent ia man for man. It was not Castro, as we expected, but a 

 party of Mexicans with 500 horses from California, on their way 

 to Sonora for the benefit of Castro. 



1. 



' I took the four principal men to the general^ and left a guard to 

 watch the camp and see that no attempt was made to escape. The 

 men were examined fseparately, and each gave a different account 

 of the ownership and destination 6f the horses. 



The chief of the party, a tall, venerable looking man, represented 

 himself to be a poor employe of several rich men engaged in sup- 

 plying the Sonora market with horses. We subsequently learned 



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JS^ovemher 23. — We did not move camp to-day, in order to make 

 a refit from lasl night's capture, and give our mules an opportu- 

 nity to pick what little grass they could before taking the desert 

 of 90 miles, which lies on the other side of the Colorado, and be- 

 tween us and water. 



Warner, Stanley, and myself, saddled up to visit the junction of 

 the Gila and Colorado, which we found due north from our camp, 

 and about a mile and a half distant. The day was stormy, the 

 wind blowing fiercely from the north. We mounted a butte of 

 feldspathic granite, and, looking 25° east of north, the course of 

 the Colorado was tracked by clouds of flying sind. The Gila 

 comes into it nearly at right angles, and the point of junction, 

 strangely chosen, is the hard butte through which, with their uni- 

 ted forces they cut a canon, and then flow off due magnetic west, 



in a direction of the resultant due to the relative strength of the 

 rivers. ' • 



Thewalls of the canon are vertical, and about 50 feet high, and 

 1,000 feet long. Almost before entering the canon, in descending 

 the Gila, its sea-green waters are lost in the chrome colored hue of 

 the Colorado. For a distance of three or four miles below the 

 junction, the river is perfectly straight, and about 600 feet wide; 

 and up^ at least, to this point, there is little doubt that the Colo- 

 rado IS always navigable for steamboats. Above, the Colorado is 

 luU of shifting sandbars, but is, no doubt, to a great extent sus- 

 ceptible of navigation. 



'11 ^^^^j ^^ certain stages, might be navigated up to the Pimos 

 Village, and possibly with small boats at all stages of water. 



Near the junction, on the north side, are the remains of an old 

 J>panish church, built near the beginning of the 17th century, by 

 the renowned missionary. Father Kino. This mission was eveniu- 

 Mly sacked by the Indians, and the inhabitants all murdered or 

 driven off. It will probably yet be the seat of a city of wealth 

 and importance, most of the mineral and fur regions of a vast ex- 



th^ ^ T.^°^^'^^ being drained by the two rivers. The stone butte 

 through which they have cut their passage is not more than a mile 

 m length. The Gila once flowed to the south; and the Colorado 



