Our stream merely touched the mountain, then turned directly to the southeast in a gradually increasing stream.  Now we began to see the breeding places of the water-birds of which we had heard.  There was a confusion of bird calls, sand-hill cranes were everywhere; in some cases with five stick-built nests in a single water-killed tree.  A blue heron flopped around as though it had broken a wing, to decoy us from its nest.  The snowy white pelican waddled along the banks and mingled with the cormorants.  There were great numbers of gulls, and occasional snipe.  We were too late to see the ducks which come here, literally by the million, during the winter months.  There were hawks’ nests in the same groups of trees as the cranes, with the young hawks stretching their necks for the food which was to be had in such abundance.  And on another tree sat the parent hawks, complacently looking over the nests of the other birds, like a coyote waiting for a horse to die.  At Cocopah Mountain a golden eagle soared, coming down close to the ground as we rested under the mesquite.  Then as we travelled clear streams of water began to pour in from the north and east, those same streams we had lost above, but cleared entirely of their silt.  Now the willows grew scarce, and instead of mud banks a dry, firm earth was built up from the river’s edge, and the stream increased in size.  Soon it was six or seven hundred feet wide and running with a fair current.  This was the Hardy River.  We noticed signs of falling water on the banks as though the stream had dropped an inch or two.  In a half-hour the mark indicated a fall of eight inches or more; then we realized we were going out with the tide.  A taste of water proved it.  The river water was well mixed with a weak saline solution.  We filled our canteens at once.

We saw a small building and a flagpole on the south shore, but on nearing the place found it was deserted.  A few miles below were two other channels equally as large as that on which we travelled, evidently fed by streams similar to our own.  There were numerous scattered trees, some of them cottonwood, and we saw some grazing cattle.  We began to look for the ranch house, which some one had said was at the point where the Colorado and the Hardy joined, and which others told us was at the Gulf.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA

That the head of the Gulf of California has a big tide is well known.  Choked in a narrowing cone, the waters rise higher and higher as they come to the apex, reaching twenty-five feet or over in a high tide.  This causes a tidal bore to roll up the Colorado, and from all reports it was something to be avoided.  The earliest Spanish explorers told some wonderful tales of being caught in this bore and of nearly losing their little sailing vessels.