Today in History:

359 Series I Volume L-I Serial 105 - Pacific Part I

Page 359 Chapter LXII. EXPEDITION TO FORT MOJAVE, ARIZ. TER.

any other kind of stock would simply result in delays and losses, and also injure the reputation of the route. It is useless to run a road from the canon to Fort Mojave. It would make nearly 100 miles additional land carriage over a country poorly supplied with water and grass. The Colorado River can be navigated to El Dorado Canon with greater ease than the Sacramento iver can be navigated from Knight's Landing to Red bluff, using the same kind of boats as are employed on the Upper Sacramento River. There are no obstructions in the Colorado River excepting the occasional shifting of sand-brs, which is peculiar to the Missouri, Mississippi, and Sacramento Rivers. No approtions of public money are necessary to improve the navigation of the river. Rich mines are locate along it from a point seventy miles south of La Paz to the mouth of the Virgin; the country is rapidly filling up with an energetic people, and private enterprises can easily do all that is required and receive handsome profit from any outlay thus made. The so-termed Colorado Steam Navigation Company runs one heavy, good=gor-nothing boat to La Paz, which town property is mostly owned by that arrangement. Instead of placing good boats on the rier, the by that arrangement. Instead of placing good boats on the river, the company aacts as sthough it wished to retard the opening of the country, and it is my decided opinion that this company is seeking to opbtain from the government a large appropriation for the ostensible purpose of improving the navigation. Steam-boat brought a load of freight to this post on 20th May last and said would return immediately. Mr. Hardy has over 300 tons of freight lying at La Paz awaiting transportation from this model company, and when it is a notorious fact that the river is as easily navigaated from La Paz to El Dorado Canon as it is from Fort Yuma to La Paz, no reasonable excuse can be offered for such conduct on the part of a company professing a great desire to open the river and supply the wants of a region rapidly developing in great mineral wealth. All the steamers they could place on the river could run down every trip loaded to utmost capacity with rock from the many ledges and receive four cents per pound for freighting it. A steam company could make fortune upon fortune at the business of freighting rock down the river. It is scarcely a year since the mines were discovered in this section of Arizona, and now there are over 100,000 persons interested in them. Many of these ledges rival in richness the Comstock and Gould and Curry, of Nevada territory, and it is my belief that ledges will be discovered all the waay from here to Lalt Lake City in the mountains of the Colorado, the Virgin, and the Sevier Rivers. The importance of opening the navigation of the Colorado River and establoshing good wagon-road communication from head of navigation to Salt Lake City cannot be urged too strongly or impressed too firmly upon the minds of those in authority who have the power within their hands of prosecuting such a work to a successful termination. I passed through numerous bands of Indians from Mountain Meadow to this point, and had no trouble with them. On the contrary, found them the most inveterate beggars I ever met. In conversation with Indians at Muddy they charged the Mormons with the Mountain Meadsow massacre, naming John D. Lee and Jacob Hamblin as two of the principal leaders in that affair. I have now communicated about all that I deem worthy of note at present time. The daily journal of the expedition will when finished embody everyu detail occurring from day to day, which, together with the map of routes, will affor complete information, and will I trust meet the approval of the general commanding, and I desire you to assure him that no effort has


Page 359 Chapter LXII. EXPEDITION TO FORT MOJAVE, ARIZ. TER.