stately columns; and all the strange lowland vegetation followed. The
San Andreas, as he called this stream, later named Santa Maria by
Garces, he followed down to the large river into which it emptied,
the Colorado, which he called the Rio Grande de Buena Esperanza, or
River of Good Hope, evidently deciding that it merited a more
distinguished title than had been awarded it at the supposed
headwaters. He appears to have well understood what river this was,
and we wonder why he gave it a new name when it had already received
two. Sometimes in new lands explorers like to have their own way.
They went down the Colorado, after a party had examined the river a
little above the mouth of the Bill Williams Fork, meeting with
various bands of friendly natives, among whom we recognise the
Mohaves and the Cocopas. Not far below where Onate reached the
Esperanza he entered the Great Colorado Valley and soon crossed the
highest point attained by Alarcon in 1340, probably near the upper
end of the valley. He now doubled Alarcon's and presently also
Melchior Diaz's paths, and arrived at the mouth of the river on the
25th of January, 1605, the first white man in over sixty years. A
large harbour which struck his fancy was named in honour of the
saint's day, Puerto de la Conversion de San Pablo, for the sun seldom
went down without a Spaniard of those days thus propitiating a saint.
We are more prone to honour the devil in these matters. The Gila they
called Rio del Nombre de Jesus, a name never used again. So it often
happens with names bestowed by explorers. The ones they regard most
highly vanish, while some they apply thoughtlessly adhere forever.

All the tribes of this region, being familiar with the Californian
coast, described it in a way that caused Onate to believe that the
gulf was the South Sea, extending indefinitely beyond the mouth of
the Colorado northwards, and thus the persistent error that Lower