yielded.  It was the last terrible scene of this act in the life-drama we are following.  The lights were out, the curtain down.  Military expeditions were sent to avenge the massacre, but they might as well have chased the stars.  The missions on the Colorado were ended.  Never again was an attempt made to found one.  The desert relapsed into its former complete subjection to the native tribes, and the indifferent Colorado swept on to the conflict with the sea-waves as if neither white man nor Amerind had ever touched its waters.  Nearly half a century passed before the face of a white man was again seen at the mouth of the river, and all the toil of Kino, Garces, and the rest was apparently as completely wasted as if they had tried to stop the flow of the Colorado with a broom.

CHAPTER V

Breaking the Wilderness—­Wanderings of the Trappers and Fur Traders—­General Ashley in Green River Valley, 1824—­Pattie along the Grand Canyon, 1826—­Lieut.  Hardy, R.N., in a Schooner on the Lower Colorado, 1826—­Jedediah Smith, Salt Lake to San Gabriel, 1826—­Pattie on the Lower Colorado in Canoes, 1827-28.

As the “sweet Afton” of old gently flowing among its green braes compares with the fierce Colorado, so do those earnest padres who so faithfully tried to plant their cross in the waste places, as sketched in the chapter just closed with the martyrdom of Garces, compare with the new set of actors that now appear, as the development of this drama of the wilderness continues.  The former fitted well into the strange scenery; they became apart of it; they fraternised with the various tribes native to the land, and all things together went forward with pictorial harmony.  They were like a few mellow figures blended skilfully into the deep tones of an ancient canvas.  But now the turbulent spirit of the raging river itself pervades the new-comers who march imperiously upon the mighty stage with the heavy tread of the conqueror, out of tune with the soft old melody; temporising with nothing; with a heedless stroke, like the remorseless hand of Fate, obliterating all obstacles to their progress.  Not theirs the desire to save natives from perdition; rather to annihilate them speedily as useless relics of a bygone time.  They are savages among savages; quite as interesting and delightful in their way as the older occupants of the soil.  It became in reality the conflict of the old and the new, and then was set the standard by which the native tribes have ever since been measured and dealt with.

The inevitable was simply coming to pass:  one more act in the world-play of continental subjugation to the European.  The United States, born in privation and blood, were growing into a nation eager for expansion, and by 1815 they had already ventured beyond the Mississippi, having purchased from France all territory north of Red River, the Arkansas, and the 42nd parallel, as far as the unsettled British boundary and the disputed region of Oregon.  Naturally, then, Americans wanted to know what was to be found in this vast tract unknown to them, and when a few bold spirits pushed out to the great mountains it was discovered that fur-bearing animals existed in multitude.  In the trapping of these and the trading in their pelts a huge industry sprang up.  In this trade future millionaires laid their foundations.