1721. Twenty-four years later (1744) Padre Jacobo Sedelmair went down
the Gila from Casa Grande to the great bend, and from there cut
across to the Colorado at about the mouth of Bill Williams Fork, but
his journey was no more fruitful than those of his predecessors in
the last two centuries. It seems extraordinary in these days that men
could traverse a country, even so infrequently, during two whole
centuries and yet know almost nothing about it. Two years after
Sedelmair touched the Colorado, Fernando Consag, looking for mission
sites, came up the gulf to its mouth, and when he had sailed away
there was another long interval before the river was again visited by
Europeans. This time it was over a quarter of a century, but the
activity then begun was far greater than ever before, and the two
padres who now became the foremost characters in the drama that so
slowly moved upon the mighty and diversified stage of the South-west,
were quite the equals in tireless energy of the Jesuit Kino. These
two padres were Garces and Escalante, more closely associated with
the history of the Basin of the Colorado than any one who had gone
before. Francisco Garces, as well as Escalante, was of the Franciscan
order, and this order, superseding the Jesuit, was making
settlements, 1769-70, at San Diego and Monterey, as well as taking a
prominent part in those already long established on the Rio Grande.
There was no overland connection between the California missions and
those of Sonora and the Rio Grande, and the desire to explore routes
for such communication was one of the incentives of both Garces and
Escalante, in their long entradas. But it seemed to be the habit of
those days, either never to seek information as to what had
previously been accomplished, or to forget it, for the expedition of
Onate might as well never have been made so far as its effect on
succeeding travels was concerned. He had crossed Arizona by the very
best route, yet Escalante, 172 years afterward, goes searching for