Ives had entirely ignored Johnson, as well as Johnson’s skill in navigating this river, and also his powerful steamboats.  The appropriation under which Ives was working was one which had originally been made for Johnson, after a visit of his to Washington, but from several causes it had been switched over to the War Department.  Captain Johnson, therefore, was determined to rob Ives of the glory of being the first to take a steamboat to the head of navigation, and he did it with a steamboat much larger than that of Ives which failed to pass Black Canyon.  The General Jesup, named after the quarter-master general of the Army, was 108 feet long, 28 feet beam, and drew 2 feet, 6 inches of water.  She had exploded in August, 1854, but had been thoroughly repaired.  On this down trip from the head of steamboat navigation she met with another accident, running on “a large rolling stone and sinking just above Chimney Peak” some eighteen miles from Yuma.  She was raised by the Colorado and towed down to the Fort.*

* See Wagon Road from Fort Defiance to the Colorado River—­Edward F. Beale, 35th Congress, 2d Session, House of Representatives, Document, 124, Washington, 1858.  Also Handbook to Arizona, pp. 247-48, R. J. Hinton, 1878.  The information as to Johnson’s application for an appropriation to explore the Colorado was given me by Mr. Robert Brewster Stanton.  Johnson also related the story of his “getting ahead” of Ives, to Mr. Stanton, who now has the written statement as well.  I communicated with Johnson in 1904, requesting some data, but he declined to give it on the ground that he intended himself to publish the story of his exploits.  Since then unfortunately he has died.

CHAPTER VII

Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock—­By Trail to Diamond
Creek, Havasupai Canyon, and the Moki Towns—­Macomb Fails in an
Attempt to Reach the Mouth of Grand River—­James White’s Masterful
Fabrication.

Steam navigation on the Colorado was now successfully established, and when Lieutenant Ives was planning the exploration of the river there were already upon it two powerful steamers exactly adapted, through experience of previous disasters, to the peculiar dangers of these waters, while Johnson, the chief owner and pilot, had become an expert in handling a steamboat amid the unusual conditions.  He had succeeded in making a truce with the dragon.  And he had secured the friendship of the tribes of Amerinds living along the banks; his men and his property were safe anywhere; his steamers often carried jolly bands of Cocopas or of Yumas from place to place.  In arranging a government expedition to explore to the farthest point practicable for steamboats, the sensible course would have been to advise with Johnson and to charter his staunch steamer Colorado, together with himself, thus gaining at the very outset an immense double advantage:  a boat perfectly modelled for the demands to be made