120 
The Colorado River 
then to ship the rudder. “But in the Rio Colorado,” he de¬ 
clares with italics, ''there is no such thing as slaek water. 
Before the ebb has finished running the flood commences, 
boiling up full eighteen inches above the surface and roaring 
like the rapids of Canada.” Had he known what we now 
know he might have found a simile nearer his position at the 
moment. Finding he could make no further progress with the 
schooner, he took a small boat and continued his voyage in it, 
though not for any great distance, as he returned to the vessel 
at night. Five or six thousand Yumas were seen, but they 
were entirely friendly. He thought the mouth of the Gila 
was below his stranded vessel, but he was mistaken in this, for 
it was in reality a great many miles farther up. What he took 
for the Gila was the main Colorado itself, and what he thought 
was the Colorado was only a bayou or flood-water channel. It 
being midsummer the river was at flood. The bayou is still 
called the False or Hardy’s Colorado. 
After eight days of waiting they at last got their rudder 
shipped, the vessel on the tide, and went back down the 
stream, one of the Yuma women swimming after them till 
taken on board. She was landed at the first opportunity. 
The interpreter told Hardy his was the first vessel that had 
ever visited the river, and that they took it for a large bird. 
The lieutenant was evidently not posted on the history of the 
region, and the Yuma was excusable for not having a memory 
that went back eighty years.' Hardy gave some of the names 
that still hold on that part of the river, like Howard’s Reach, 
where his Bruja was stranded, Montague and Gore Islands, etc. 
The same month that Hardy sailed away from the mouth of 
the Colorado, August, 1826, Jedediah Smith started from Salt 
Lake (the 22d), passed south by Ashley’s or Utah Lake, and, 
keeping down the west side of the Wasatch and the High Pla¬ 
teaus, reached the Virgen River near the south-western corner of 
Utah. This he called Adams River in honour of the President 
of the United States. Following it south-west through the Pai 
Ute country for twelve days he came to its junction with what 
^ Fernando Consag entered the river, 1746, looking for mission sites, and two 
centuries before that was Alargon. 
