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Show 478 COMMENTARY ON OSATE, 1604- 05. this river may be the very one of which they gave in-that a thousand ships might ride at anchor. This was formally named Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo. The expedition returned by the same way it had gone, and reached San Gabriel April 25, 1605. ( This San Gabriel was so named by Onate in 1599; it was the place he had begun to build Aug. 23, 1598, and had called San Francisco de los Espanoles. This and the above mentioned San Juan ( de los Caballeros) were on opposite sides of the Rio Grande del Norte, about the mouth of the Rio Chama; and these settlements were prior to the location of Santa F6 in 1608.) Though the itinerary of this extremely important expedition across New Mexico and Arizona, from the Rio Grande at the mouth of Rio Chama to the Colorado at the mouth of Bill Williams' fork, is not so precise and detailed as we could wish, it is easy to appreciate the route approximately, as coinciding more or less nearly with the line of the present railroad, and with the explorations of Sitgreaves, Whipple, and E. F. Beale. But there is one point on Onate's journey where we can actually put our finger on him, so to speak; for he was at El Morro or Inscription Rock, and the record thereon inscribed is still legible in part- or was so recently. As rendered in alleged facsimile by Lieut J. H. Simpson, on his lithographic plate 69, in the Senate Ex. Doc. No. 64, 31st Congr., 1st session, 8vo, Washington, 1850, the inscription looks something like this: " Paso pora quielanzadod on del descubrim i6deabriball6o6" The able officer who has given us this and many other invaluable records from the same rock had evidently no clew to the meaning, though he had the assistance of Chief Justice J. Houghton, Senor Donaciano Vigil, secretary of the province, |