CHAPTER XVII. 
Rio Colorado and its Valley—-Ruins—Rio Severe and Valley—An 
old Trapper Explorer—Rio San Juan and Valley—Rio Jila and 
Valley—A Legend—Timpanigos Lake and Valley—Timpanigos 
Lake—Captain Young’s Expedition—Death—Mary’s River and 
Vale. 
This river has two principal sources ; the one among the 
Wind River spur of the Rocky Mountains, in Latitude 43° N., 
which as it moves southwardly becomes a considerable stream 
called Sheetskadee or Green River; the other among the 
eastern range of the Rocky Mountains, in Latitude 40° N., 
which, running westward ly. forms a stream still larger than 
the Sheetskadee, which has been called Rio Grande, or the 
Colorado of the West; a stream of dreadful remembrances, of 
horrid events, over which the narrator of Indian legends, as 
well as the chronicler of the early explorers, shudders to take 
a retrospect. 
Upper CalifoPvNia.— River Colorado. — The water of this 
river is clear among the Rocky Mountains, but as it approach¬ 
es the Gulf, it becomes much discolored by red sand and clay. 
Hence its name—Colorado, a Spanish word meaning red. 
My friend, Doctor Lyman, of Buffalo, who travelled from 
Santa Fe, in New Mexico, by the way of the Colorado of the 
West, to Upper California, in the year 1841, has kindly fur¬ 
nished me with some of his observations, as well on that stream 
as the adjacent territories and the Indians inhabiting them, 
which I feel great pleasure in giving to the reader. The Doc¬ 
tor’s route lay northwesterly, up the head waters of the Rio Bra¬ 
vo del Norte—over the dividing ridge between those waters and 
the upper branches of the San Juan, and northwardly across 
these to the Rio Colorado of the West—down the northern 
bank of this river to the Californian Mountains—and through 
these to El Pueblo de los Angelos, near the coast of the Pa- 
