$32 SANTA CRUZ TO 
Before one o'clock we had passed all the hills; 
when the wagons were reloaded, the mules packed, 
and we continued our journey. I here turned off and 
took the old Janos road, believing it to furnish a shorter 
route to E] Paso than that by the Copper Mines, which 
we took in our journey into Sonora last year; besides 
I was desirous of varying my course, and examining 
the country further south. This road has been travel- 
led for nearly two centuries, or since the first settle- 
ment of the country. It is the only route practicable 
for wagons between Chihuahua and Sonora, and was 
only made so by Colonel Cooke. Nor is there any 
other for pack-mules, except one a short distance to 
the south leading from Correlitos to Babispe. Further 
south the great Sierra Madre is impassable for more 
than five hundred miles. 
When Colonel Cooke set out from Santa Fé for 
California, he came down the Rio Grande to the pre- 
sent ford at San Diego, and thence to Ojo de Vaca. His 
most direct course would then have been west across 
the unexplored region lying between that place and 
the San Pedro; but as his guide, Leroux, knew noth- 
ing of that country, he deemed it prudent, when so 
many lives were dependent on him, to follow a route 
with which he was acquainted. Accordingly he led 
them in a south-westerly course to the Guadalupe Pass, 
through which he knew there was a trail from Janos. 
In reaching this he had to pass over a district of fifty- 
two miles to Las Playas without water, in which his 
men suffered severely from thirst; and on reaching the 
pass, he was obliged to cut a road for his wagons, 4s 
wheeled vehicles had never before gone that way. 
