CHAPTER VII 
Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock—By Trail to Diamond Creek, 
Havasupai Canyon, and the Moki Towns—Macomb Fails in an Attempt to 
Reach the Mouth of Grand River—James White’s Masterful Fabrication. 
S TEAM navigation on the Colorado was now successfully 
established, and when Lieutenant Ives was planning the 
exploration of the river there were already upon it two power¬ 
ful steamers exactly adapted, through experience of previous 
disasters, to the peculiar dangers of these waters, while John¬ 
son, the chief owner and pilot, had become an expert in 
handling a steamboat amid the unusual conditions. He had 
succeeded in making a truce with the dragon. And he had 
secured the friendship of the tribes of Amerinds living along 
the banks; his men and his property were safe anywhere; his 
steamers often carried jolly bands of Cocopas or of Yumas 
from place to place. In arranging a government expedition 
to explore to the farthest point practicable for steamboats, the 
sensible course would have been to advise with Johnson and 
to charter his staunch steamer Colorado, together with himself, 
thus gaining at the very outset an immense double advantage: 
a boat perfectly modelled for the demands to be made upon 
it, and a guide entirely familiar with the tricks of the perfidious 
waters. Especially important would this have been because 
Lieutenant Ives, who was instructed to direct this work, was 
ordered to accomplish it at the lowest and worst stage of the 
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