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Show , 554 . Ex. Doc. No. 41. Sonora, as to the be:-t cou:-se to be taken. They were deccive.d themsehes, as I believe and so deceived me, as to the d1- . f Yanos· and cra~e a decided opinion as to the unsafety r ef_ct_wnt o·.ncr :nt~o, the pb;airie. and, also, that it would be best to o 'en UII b • ' . l f I • k the Yanos road and thence, by an old trail, a roac ormer y ulas ede to connect the ' presidios or f'r onti· er garn·s ons, Y ano s , Fron - teras, Fruson, &c. The next morning, having reluctantly assented, I t_ook the Yan~s road. A mile or two convinced me (and them) t~at Its general direction was very different from their represe_ntat10ns; and ea~t of south. I theri took the responsibility of turmng short to the nght, and ordered them to guide me to the water h_ole. I. had. some confu~ed information of water to be found _In the dn~ctwn of San Bernaoino. lVIr. Leroux had been very decHled that It would be necessary to go by thi~ ~outhern point, even if I ve_nture~ th~~ far on the unknown prauie. I then marched 40 . m1les w1thout water except a drink for part of the men, where I had hoped to find e~oug-h fot· encamping. The batta~ion w_ere not prepared for it and suffered much. These were anxiOus Circumstances,_ and the r:sponsibility I had taken weighed heavily upon me; theu saf~ty and my success seemed both doubtful. F~rtunately a lar~e s_pnng was reached the second n_ight, after a contmuous _march of th1r~een hours·' and when men a.n d mules were at the pomt of exhaustiOn, for the weather was qu1te warm. . I was joined here by a party of New Mexicans, who had been trading with the Apaches. .I purchased twenty-one mules of t,hem, giving a check on the assistant quartermaster at Santa Fe. . I also hired one of them to conduct Leroux to the mountain valley, where they had left the Apaches, and sen~ him ~o seek an Indian guide. A day or two after, we found ~ trad leading toward San Bernadino; and the fourth day, early, JUst after Chabonnaux the only guide then prtsen had very unwarrantably gone off hundng, we fell into what was believed to be the trail or road from Y an os to Fron teras; and it immediate I y led us to a preci pi to us and rocky descent, of perhaps a thousand feet, amongst broken, wild and c~nfused mountain peaks, which extended as far as could be seen from our great height. I soon found the trail could not be made passable for the wagons; and I hunted myself for a more promi'sing descent, and, in fact, saw a part of the proper one; but very inaccessible from the mountain height on \vhich I then was. My next care was to seek the nearest ground suitable for a camp; fortunately I found water about a mile off. All pronounced the country betore us impassable for wagons; I, nevertheless, immediately organized a large working party, under Lieutenant Stoneman, and sent him to make a passage. That night Leroux arrived, bringing an Apache chief, whom he had got hold of with difficulty, and probably great address; so shy were they found. Next morning, it was owing to Leroux's deciued assertious an.d arguments that there could be and was no other known pass but the horse trail, that I did not insist on his thorough examination. He even asserted, but was mistaken, that he had examined the , J I .. Ex. Doc. No. 41. 555 opening I had seen and Jcsc ribed, and beJie\ell might be a wagon road. Meanwhile, the party continued the ~econd day hard at work with crowbar, pi ck, &c.; whilst I sent one company and about half the baggage, pa cked on mules, to the first water on the trail, 1n a deep ravine below. It was about six miles, and the mules were brought back in the evening. Next morning they took the 1est of the loading, and I succeeded that day, with uch labor and difficulty, breaking one, in getting the wagons to the new camp. J?r. Foster accidentally found the outlet of an old wagon road, (m~o mine,) and, (allowing back, _it led him to the verge of the plaiD, about a mde from our pomt of descent. He says this is ..;ailed the pass of Guadalupe; and that it is the only one, for many hundreds of miles to the south, by which the broken descent from the great table land of Mexico can be maue by wagons, and rarely by pack mules. I hold it to be a question whether the same diffir ult formation does not extend north, a.t least to the Gila. If it is. so, my road i probably the nearest and best route. But if the prairie, to the north, is open to the San Pedro, and water can be f~und, that improvem~nt will make my road not only a good but a dnect one from the R10 Grande to the Pacific. San ~e_rnadino is a r~ined ranche, with buildings enc.losed by a walJ, With regular bast10ns. It overlqoks a wide, flat and rich valley, watered by a noble spring, which runs into one of the upper branches of the Huaqui river, which is but a few miles distant. Here I succeeded in meeting a few of the Apaches, and obtained a guide, who went about 20 miles, and described the rest of the route to the San Peuro. He was afraid to venture further, and return alone over the plain; the point where he turned ba ck was within four-een miles of the presidio of Fronteras. It was in the mountain pass that we first saw the wild bulls, from which the command obi< i'ined ~heir exclusive supply of meat for about two weeks. They .. re the mcrease from those abandoned, when the two ranches of San Bernadi~o and San Pedro (on the river of the same name) were broken up, m c_onsequence of incessant Indian attacks. They have pre ad and mere a. eel, so as to cover the country· they were as / i\·il'd and more dangerous than buffalo. ' . I made the next .62 miles, to the San Pedro river, with little more difficulty than cutti~g ~y way through dense thickets of mezquite and many. othe~ vanet1es of bushes, aJl excessively t..horny. It was but 27 mile Without water over the last divide· there was snow one day, and for about two weeks, at that time,' we suffered with ..; ol_d. I descenEled the San Pedro 55 miles, to a point whence a trail goes to Tueson. The guides represented that it was 85 miles of Vtry difficult, if practicable, ground to the mouth of the San Pedr~, and one hundred from there to the Pi m os; also, ver;y bad, ctnd little ~r no grass; and, on the other hand, that it was only ab?ut 90 mdes of a good road, with grass, by Tueson to the same pomt. I r~flected that I was in no condition to go an unnecessary hundred mdes, good or bad; and that, if their statements were true, the future road must go by the town. I had previously sent Leroux, Foster and others to examine if there was water on the 30 |