** There was an old crossing near there, also.

From this Crossing-of-the-Fathers, just above where the river enters Arizona, to the Moki Towns Escalante had a plain trail, and a much simpler topography, and had no difficulty in arriving there.  The remainder of his road, from Moki to Zuni and around to Santa Fe, was one he had travelled before, and the party soon completed the circuit of more than 1500 miles mainly through unknown country, one of the most remarkable explorations ever carried out in the West.  It is sometimes stated that Escalante crossed the Grand Canyon, but, as is perfectly plain from the data, he did not; in fact, he could not have done it with horses.

Garces was not yet finished with his labours on the lower Colorado, and we will return to him.  The authorities had decided to establish there two nondescript settlements, a sort of cross between mission, pueblo, and presidio.  Captain Palma, the Yuma chief, whose devotions and piety had so delighted the good Father, was eager to have missions started, and constantly importuned the government to grant them.  Garces, therefore, went to Yuma again in 1779 to prepare the way, and in 1780 two of the hybrid affairs were inaugurated, one at what is now Fort Yuma, called Puerto de la Purisima Concepcion, after the little canyon hard by, so named by Garces previously, a canyon fifty feet deep and a thousand feet long; the other, about eight miles down, called San Pedro y San Pablo de Bicuner.  There were four padres; Garces and Barraneche at the upper station, and Diaz and Moreno at the lower.  Each place had eight or ten soldiers, a few colonists, and a few labourers.  The Spaniards were obliged to appropriate some of the best lands to till for the support of the missions, and this, together with the general poverty of the establishments when he had expected something fine, disgusted Palma and exasperated him and the other Yumas.  In June, 1781, Captain Moncada, lieutenant-governor of Lower California, arrived with soldiers and recruits en route for California settlements, and encamped opposite Yuma.  After some of these people had been sent forward or back as the plans demanded, Moncada remained at the camp with a few of his soldiers.  No one suspected the tornado which was brewing.  All the life of the camp, of the missions, and of the Yumas went on with the same apparent smoothness, but it was only a delusion suddenly and horribly dispelled on the fateful 17th of July.  Without a sign preliminary to the execution of their wrath, Captain Palma and all his band threw piety to the winds, and annihilated with clubs Moncada’s camp and most of the men in the two missions.  Garces and his assistant, Barraneche, were at first spared.  Even the conscience of Talma hesitated to murder the good and amiable Garces, who had never been to him and his people anything but a kind and generous friend, but the rabble declared these two were the worst of all, and under this pressure Palma