Our smaller canteen was still filled with the fresh water secured the evening before.  The other had been emptied and was filled again before the return of the tide, but considerable taste of the salt remained.  What we did now must be done with caution.  So far we had not seen the ranch.  We were in doubt whether it was somewhere out on the coast or back on one of the sloughs passed the evening before.  We had heard of large sail-boats being hauled from Yuma and launched by the ranch.  This would seem to indicate that it was somewhere on the Gulf.  We had provisions sufficient for one day, one canteen of fresh water, and another so mixed with the salt water that we would not use it except as a last resort.

A little after 3.30 P.M. the tide changed; we launched our boat and went out with the flood.  As we neared the mouth of the stream we found that the inrush and outrush of water had torn the banks.  Here the river spread in a circular pool several miles across.  It seemed almost as if the waters ran clear to the line of yellow cliffs and to the hazy mountain range.  Then the shores closed in again just before the current divided quite evenly on either side of a section of the barren plain named Montague Island.  We took the channel to the east.

Our last hope of finding the ranch was in a dried-out river channel, overgrown with trees.  But although we looked carefully as we passed, there was no sign of a trail or of human life.  Some egrets preened their silken feathers on the bank; sand-hill cranes and two coyotes, fat as hogs and dragging tails weighted with mud, feasted on the lively hermit-crabs, which they extracted from their holes—­and that was all.

The sun, just above the lilac-tinted mountains, hung like a great suspended ball of fire.  The cloudless sky glared like a furnace.  Deep purple shadows crept into the canyons slashing the mountain range.  The yellow dust-waves and the mirages disappeared with the going down of the sun.  Still we were carried on and on.  We would go down with the tide.  Now the end of the island lay opposite the line of cliffs; soon we would be in the Gulf.

So ended the Colorado.  Two thousand miles above, it was a beautiful river, born of a hundred snow-capped peaks and a thousand crystal streams; gathering strength, it became the masterful river which had carved the hearts of mountains and slashed the rocky plateaus, draining a kingdom and giving but little in return.  Now it was going under, but it was fighting to the end.  Waves of yellow struggled up through waves of green and were beaten down again.  The dorsal fins of a half-dozen sharks cut circles near our craft.  With the last afterglow we were past the end of the island and were nearing the brooding cliffs.  Still the current ran strong.  The last vestige of day was swallowed in the gloom, just as the Colorado was buried ’neath the blue.  A hard wind was blowing, toward the shore; the sea was choppy.  A point of rocks where the cliffs met the sea was our goal.  Would we never reach it?  Even in the night, which was now upon us, the distance was deceptive.  At last we neared the pile of rocks.  The sound of waters pounding on the shore was heard, and we hurriedly landed, a half-mile above it, just as the tide turned.