42 MOUTH OF THE COLORADO TO FORT YUMA——DESCRIPTION OF POST. 
steamboat company. I hunted up my companion of the previous night, and prevailed upon 
him to try and catch me a horse, which he succeeded after an hour or two in doing. He some- 
what objected to my riding the animal he had caught, informing me that it was a stallion of 
great spirit and value that had been left in charge of his master, and having been running loose 
for some weeks would perhaps be so wild as to do injury not only to his rider but to himself. 
The object of this solicitude did not look at all dangerous, but I mounted him with great 
caution and started for the fort. I soon found that my charger was not likely to volunteer a 
faster gait than a leisurely walk, and, with a half dread of rousing some slumbering fires, 
touched him with the spur. This producing no effect, I dug the spur into his side a little 
harder, and at last, with the help of a stout cudgel, broken from a tree, urged him into a trot. 
By an energetic appliance of the stick and both heels, the first twelve miles were accomplished 
in a little more than three hours, when the brute subsided again into a walk, from which 
nothing could start him. While pondering over the idea that my friend on the river was a 
practical joker, I met an ox team and wagon, with two or three Mexicans trudging alongside 
and a white man lying on his back on top of the load. He roused up as I passed, and inquired, 
with a muddled air and thick utterance, what I was doing with his friend’s horse, from which 
I inferred that he was the owner of the place where we had passed the night, was the custodian 
of the animal in question, and was also somewhat intoxicated. On being informed of the 
circumstances of the case, he expressed great indignation, assuring me that the horse was the 
most valuable one in that part of the country; had been left with him as a precious charge; 
that he would not for five hundred dollars have him subjected to a chance of injury, and that 
I must at once dismount and let him be driven back by the Mexicans. Fort Yuma being 
nearly fifteen miles distant and the day somewhat advanced, I tried to convince him that no 
great injury would be done by a few hours of careful riding; but, under a strange infatuation 
regarding the value of the animal I was bestriding, he persisted, with drunken obstinacy, that 
he should not be ridden a step further. 1 was revolving the probability of being able, by a 
sudden violent attack of whip and spur, to excite the cherished beast into a trot, and thus 
escape from his guardian, when the latter all at once changed his mind and told me that every 
horse he had in the world and all that his friends had were at my disposal as long as I wanted, 
and, after an affectionate squeeze of the hand, gave me a benign smile, and falling upon his 
back called to the driver to go on. 
The road to the fort was through a flat and desolate looking country. A few miles of it 
passed over a point of the great desert to the east. Bunches of grease wood and stunted 
cedars composed nearly all the vegetation. A bevy of quail would occasionally start up from 
the bushes at my approach, and two or three times a coyote ran across the trail. A couple 
of straggling Yumas, from a village that could be seen at some distance towards the river, 
came sauntering by and helped to break the monotony, but it was a dreary eight hours ride, 
and I was glad enough when, a little before sunset, the flagstaff that stands on the parade of 
the fort came in view. The whole distance was only about twenty-seven miles, and, with a 
good riding animal, might have been easily made in three hours. By the river the distance 
between the same points is said to be more than forty miles. 
During the latter part of the journey the picturesque and singularly shaped peaks of the 
range of mountains beyond the fort appeared to great advantage—the beautiful outlines of the 
dark blue masses being drawn in distinct relief upon the illuminated western sky. 
Fort Yuma is built upon the west side of the river, on the top of a gravelly spur that 
extends with a steep bluff to the edge of the stream. A corresponding precipice upon the 
opposite side forms, with the other, a gate through which the united waters of the Gila and 
Colorado flow in a comparatively narrow bed. The mouth of the Gila is just above. The 
southern emigrant route to California crosses the river at this place. For ten or fifteen miles 
north and south the valley is inhabited by the Yuma Indians, a few years ago the most powerful 
