The steamboat men could give me little information about the river.  The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta.  The widely spread water finally collected into an ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado.  As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new channel beyond a certain point called Volcanic Lake.  Two or three parties had come back with stories of having attempted it, but found themselves in the middle of a cane-brake with insufficient water to float a boat.  With a desire to be of real assistance to me, one old captain called a Yuma Indian into his office and asked him his opinion, suggesting that he might go along.

“Mebbe so get lost in the trees, mebbe so get shot by the Cocopah,” the Indian replied as he shook his head.

The captain laughed at the last and said that the Yuma and Cocopah Indians were not the best of friends, and accused each other of all sorts of things which neither had committed.  Some Mexicans and certain outlawed whites who kept close to the border for different reasons, and the possibilities of bogging in a cane-brake were the only uncertainties.  In so many words he advised me against going.

Still I persevered.  I had planned so long on completing my boating trip to the Gulf, that I disliked to abandon the idea altogether.  I felt sure, with a flood on the Colorado, there would be some channel that a flat-bottomed boat could go through, when travelling with the current; but the return trip and the chances of being made a target for some hidden native who had lived on this unfriendly border and had as much reason for respecting some citizens of the United States as our own Indians had in the frontier days, caused me considerable concern.  I knew it was customary everywhere to make much of the imaginary dangers, as we had found in our other journeys; but it is not difficult to discriminate between sound advice and the croakings which are based on lack of real information.  I knew this was sound advice, and as usual I disliked to follow it.  At last I got some encouragement.  It came from a retired Wild West showman,—­the real thing, one who knew the West from its early days.  He laughed at the idea of danger and said I was not likely to find any one, even if I was anxious to do so, until I got to the La Bolso Ranch near the Gulf.  They would be glad to see me.  He thought it was likely to prove uninteresting unless I intended to hunt wild hogs, but that was useless without dogs, and I would have trouble getting a gun past the custom officers.  His advice was to talk with the Mexican consul, as he might know some one who could bring me back by horseback.