34 
The Colorado River 
there has been an error, and these Moki towns are not Tusa- 
yan. Where Cardenas reached the great canyon the river came 
from the north-east and turned to the south-soiith-west. There 
are but two places where the canyoned river in Arizona con¬ 
forms to this course, one at Lee’s Ferry, and the other the 
stretch from Diamond Creek to the Kanab Canyon. The 
walls being low at Lee’s Ferry, that locality may be excluded, 
for where Cardenas first looked into the canyon it was so deep 
that the river appeared like a brook, though the natives de¬ 
clared it to be half a league wide. Three of the most agile 
men, after the party had followed along the rim for three days 
hunting for a favourable place, tried to descend to the water, 
but were unable to go more than one-third of the way. Yet 
from the place they reached, the stream looked very large, and 
buttes that from above seemed no higher than a man were 
found to be taller than the great tower of Seville. There can 
be no doubt that this was the gorge we now call the Grand 
Canyon. No other answers the description. Cardenas said 
the width at the top, that is, the “outer” gorge with its 
broken edge, was three or four leagues or more in an air line.^ 
This is the case at both great bends of the river. The point 
he reached has usually been put, without definite reason, at 
about opposite Bright Angel River, say near the letter “L” of 
the word “Colorado” on the relief map, page 41 op., but here 
the river comes from the south-east and turns to the north-west, 
directly the reverse of what Cardenas observed. The actual 
place then must have been about midway of the stretch referred 
to, that is, near the letter “A” of the word “Canon ” on the 
relief map.' Where he started from to arrive at this part of 
the canyon cannot be discussed here for want of space, but the 
writer believes the place was some three hundred miles south¬ 
east, say near Four Peaks on the new Mexican line.^ Cardenas 
^ “ A las barrancas del rio que puestos a el bado [lado ?] de ellas parecia al 
otro bordo que auia mas de tres o quatro leguas por el ayre.”—Castaneda, in 
Winship’s monograph, Fourteenth Ann. Rep. Bureau of EtJmology, p. 429. 
® For the author’s views on Coronado’s route see the Bulletin of the American 
Geographical Society, December, 1897. Those views have been confirmed by 
later study, the only change being the shifting of Cibola from the Florida Moun¬ 
tains north-westerly to the region of the Gila, perhaps near old Fort West. 
