9 ^ The Colorado River 
country, notwithstanding several small entradas and the con¬ 
siderable one of Juan Maria Ribera in 1761, who went as far as 
Gunnison River, was still a terra incognita, and the distance to 
the Pacific was also an uncertain quantity. Escalante believed 
a better road existed to Monterey by way of the north than 
by the middle route, and a further incentive to journey that 
A Zuni Home. 
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Geol. Survey. 
way was probably the rumours of large towns in that direction, 
the same will-o’-the-wisp the Spaniards for nearly three cent¬ 
uries had been vainly pursuing. The authorities had urged 
two expeditions to Alta California, to establish communica¬ 
tion ; Garces and Captain Anza had carried out one, and now 
Escalante was to execute the other. 
Besides the ministro Escalante, there were in the party 
eight persons. Padre Francisco Dominguez, Juan Pedro Cis¬ 
neros, alcalde of Zuni, Bernardo Miera y Pacheco, capi- 
tain miliciano of Sante Fe, Don Juan Lain, and four other 
soldiers. Lain had been with Ribera and was therefore official 
guide. They went from Sante Fe by way of Abiquiu and the 
Chama River to the San Juan about where it first meets the 
