these branches the Colorado
has a general course from the north-east to the south-west of seven
hundred miles to the head of the Gulf of California. Four hundred of
this seven hundred miles is an almost unbroken chasm of kenyon, with
perpendicular sides hundreds of feet in height, at the bottom of which
the waters rush over continuous cascades. This kenyon terminates thirty
[should be three hundred] miles above the gulf. To this point the river
is navigable. The country on each side of its whole course is a rolling
desert of loose brown earth, on which the rains and the dews never fall.
A few years since, two Catholic missionaries and their servants on their
way from the mountains to California, attempted to descend the Colorado.
They have never been seen since the morning they commenced their fatal
undertaking.

"A party of trappers and others made a strong boat and manned it well
with the determination of floating down the river to take beaver that
they supposed lived along its banks. But they found themselves in such
danger after entering the kenyon that with might and main they thrust
their trembling boat ashore and succeeded in leaping upon the crags and
lightening it before it was swallowed in the dashing torrent."

They had a difficult time in getting out of the canyon, but finally,
by means of ropes and by digging steps with their rifle barrels, they
reached the open country and made their way back to the starting-point.
This was, possibly, the expedition which was wrecked in Lodore, after
Ashley's Red Canyon trip. I have not succeeded in finding any other
account that would fit that place. Arriving at Fort Davy Crockett, in
Brown's Park, he describes it as "a hollow square of one-storey log
cabins, with roofs and floor of mud. Around these we found the conical
skin lodges of the squaws of the white trappers who were away on their
fall hunt, and also the lodges of a few Snake Indians who had preceded
their tribe to this their winter haunt. Here also were the lodges of Mr.
Robinson, a trader, who usually stations himself here to traffic with
the Indians and white trappers. His skin lodge was his warehouse, and
buffalo robes spread on the ground his counter, on which he displayed
his butcher knives, hatchets, powder, lead, fish-hooks, and whiskey.
In exchange for these articles he received beaver skins from trappers,
money from travellers, and horses from the Indians. Thus, as one would
believe, Mr. Robinson dri