The Beginnings of San Francisco

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Perils Of The Desert 73 Anza had now reached the end of the known land. The Cajuenches, or, as he calls them, the Cojats, received him with the same friendly welcome given by their relatives, the Yumas, but their jurisdiction was confined to the flood plain of the river, and to the west ranged the...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: The Perils Of The Desert 73 Anza had now reached the end of the known land. The Cajuenches, or, as he calls them, the Cojats, received him with the same friendly welcome given by their relatives, the Yumas, but their jurisdiction was confined to the flood plain of the river, and to the west ranged the fierce Comeya, into whose territory no Cajuenche or Yuma would venture. The expedition must cross the Colorado desert without guides and find the water-holes as best it could. Among Anza's train was a Christian Indian, Sebastian Tarabel, by name, a native of the mission of Santa Gertrudes in Lower California. He was one of five Indians of that mission who had accompanied Portola on his march to Monterey in 1769. Sebastian had found the country so well suited to his taste that he had brought his wife from Lower California and settled at the mission of San Gabriel. Becoming tired of life at the mission he had run away, taking with him his wife and his brother, and had struck out across the San Jacinto mountains and the Colorado desert for the pueblos of the Yumas. Lost amid the sand-hills of the desert, his wife and his brother perished, but he, rescued by the Yumas, had been taken by Palma to the presidio of Altar, where he joined the expedition of Anza as guide. These sand-hills of the Colorado desert reach from a point about thirty-five miles north of the boundary line to some ten or twelve miles below it, the tract varying in width from ten to thirty miles. They are greatly dreaded, becausetheir similarity of appearance is most bewildering and the constantly shifting sand quickly obliterates any trail made through them. It was to avoid these that the detour to the southwest into Lower California was made. The Indian, Sebastian, was of no help to Anza in his present need. P...