FORT YUMA TO MOJAVE CANON—YUMA INDIANS. 53 
leaving Fort Yuma, has been uniformly pleasant; the nights are becoming sensibly colder, but 
the days are still warm and delightful. 
Mariano and the Capitan have made themselves quite at home in our party, and even 
evince some interest in our fortunes and progress. They sit all day on a particular portion of 
the rail, quiet observers of what is going on. The many mishaps and detentions on the bars 
must give them a low opinion of our skill in navigation; but they are too polite to show it, and 
when the boat grounds upon a bar will remain by the hoar immovable, without manifesting 
the least impatience, till she is again afloat. When we make a landing to take in wood they 
instantly disappear, and refresh themselves with the absence of civilization until the whistle 
signals that it is time to start; and similarly at night, after receiving their rations, they go off 
to a distance, out of sight of our roaring camp-fires, and cook their food over a few smouldering 
embers, in the most quiet and secluded nook that they can find. Each has been presented with 
a pair of blankets, and these, with full and regular rations, doubtless do much to reconcile them 
to their involuntary trip. 
‘Camp 24, Half-way mountain, January 23.—Since leaving the Chocolate mountains we have 
travelled sixty-five miles, and are stillin the Great Colorado valley, entered at Porphyry Gate. 
The character of the river has been similar to that below Fort Yuma; but the navigation has 
proved easier than was anticipated. The water has been frequently divided into several chan- 
nels, or spread over a wide surface, and filled with snags; but several of the most unfavorable 
looking places have afforded a clear and unobstructed passage. Bars, as usual, have been of 
constant occurrence, and at a place named the Dismal Flats, ten miles north of Camp 18, the 
obstacles were numerous, and we experienced a lony detention, but got through at last without 
any worse adventure than the loss of a rudder and some dents made in the wrought-iron hull 
by thumps from snags. A few miles above the flats a little stream—Carroll’s creek—comes in 
from the west. Through the whole of the Colorado valley the course of the river has been 
circuitous, and in the bends, along the concave banks, the channel is almost always good. 
The greater part of the valley is a desert plain, a hundred feet or more above the river, 
limited by clay and gravel bluffs that often abut close upon the edge of the water and form 
little cafions. There is a good deal of bottom land, and some of it is fertile; but much of it, 
as I am informed by Dr. Newberry, is so charged with alkali as to be unproductive. 
The Yumas cultivate the better portions, which are watered during the summer overflow. 
A well-conducted system of irrigation would wash out the salt from the soil and increase the 
amount of productive land. 
Fifteen or twenty miles above Porphyry Gate we came in sight of some high mountains on 
the west bank of the river. Mariano informed me that these were half-way between the fort 
and the Mojave villages. Our present camp is near their southern base; they do not cross the 
river, but are skirted by it for many miles. Two or three short and low ranges intervene 
between the Half-way mountains and the foot of the valley, which otherwise extends unbroken 
southward to the base of the Chocolate mountains, and west to the parallel chains that form 
the Dome Rock range. 
The Yumas have been constantly encountered since we have been in this valley. They 
collect in knots upon the banks to watch us pass, and their appearance is invariably the pre- 
cursor of trouble. Whether their villages are near places where the river is most easily 
forded, or whether they select for points of view the spots where they know we will meet with 
detention, we cannot tell; but the coincidence between their presence and a bad bar is so 
unfailing that Mr. Carroll considers it a sufficient reason to slow down the engine when he sees 
them collected upon the bank. Their fields and villages have not been seen from the river; 
for wherever there is much bottom land there is a thick growth of trees near the water, that 
intercepts the view of the country beyond. Large numbers of these trees are dead and sun- 
ried, and furnish excellent fuel. 
