On the trail of a Spanish pioneer; the diary and itinerary of Francisco Garces (missionary priest) in his travels through Sonora, Arizona, and California, 1775-1776; translated from an official contemporaneous copy of the original Spanish manscript, and ed., with copious critical notes

On the trail of a Spanish pioneer; the diary and itinerary of Francisco Garcés (missionary priest) in his travels through Sonora, Arizona, and California, 1775-1776; translated from an official contemporaneous copy of the original Spanish manscript, and e - Page 40

CATARACT CANON NOTED FURTHER. 34I might be some of the Apaches who harass these provinces. My suspicion increased when the women came, and among them some whiter than is the rule of 350 30'. The bed of the main canon sometimes runs water from near its head downward; but is ordinarily dry almost down to the Havasupai settlement When I traversed it, the bed was as dry as tinder, sandy, rocky, and choked with cactus; only here and there was some seepage through the walls, either trickling idly away and soon evaporating, or, if stronger, collecting in some little rocky tank. The scene changes as if by magic at the point said, where Cataract creek bursts out of the ground at a beautiful spring, almost immedi­ately attaining a volume of some 5,000 miners' inches, equaling a creek eight feet wide and four feet deep. The water is of a deep blue color, and so heavily charged with lime that it forms stalactites wherever it drips, and incrusts everything upon which it dries. A kind of maidenhair fern grows here in pro­fusion, and some of the delicate fronds seem as if petrified. The arable land, including that rendered available by artificial irrigation, is probably not over 400 acres; on this little farm stretched along the creek the Indians raised their corn, beans, melons, squashes, peaches, apricots, and sunflower- seeds. They lived in brush lodges scattered over their secluded demesne, ex­cept some whom I found occupying caves in the rocky sides of the canon which they had walled up, quite like the prehistoric cliff- dwellers. These hermits seemed quite content with their half- underground lot, and only anxious to be let alone. A little distance below the settlement, following a trail not devoid of all danger, may be witnessed the spectacle to which Cataract canon owes its name, as the water of the creek falls away in three beautiful cascades, with pitches in the aggregate of perhaps 250 feet, before disappearing in the unfathomable abyss beyond. My own entrada into this caxon was neither so dramatic as