Escalante was at this moment making preparations for his traverse to the San Gabriel Mission. On July 29th he started _north_, absurd as it may now appear to us who know the whole geography. Crossing western Colorado, over Green River, which he called Buenaventura, near the mouth of White River, he mounted the Wasatch Range by the Uinta and its branches, and entered Salt Lake valley, probably by what is now known as Spanish Fork. After viewing Lake Timpanogos (Utah Lake), he turned southward, followed down the western edge of the great mountains extending north and south along the central line of Utah, about through where Fillmore, Beaver, and Parowan now stand, to the Virgen River at about Toquerville. Here the season indicating the approach of winter, it was decided to abandon the attempt to reach San Gabriel, and strike eastward for the Moki Towns, where Escalante previously had been. He was not aware of the tremendous obstacles, in the nature of deep canyons, which intervened. After a vast amount of effort he crossed, not the Grand Canyon, as has sometimes been stated, but the lower end of Glen Canyon, at a point about thirty-five miles above what is now Lee Ferry. The place is still known as the Crossing of the Fathers. From here there was a trail to the Moki Towns, and their anxiety soon came to an end. The route Garces travelled from the west to the Moki Towns became no highway; indeed, for years was not travelled at all, nor had Escalante's anything in its favour so far as reaching California was concerned. For half a century longer the New Mexican and Californian missions remained about as far apart as ever. Those in California waxed rich and had little cause to desire the world to come to them. When it did come it was the beginning of their end. The Spaniards were as brave a people as ever lived. They had now firmly established themselves in Texas, in New Mexico, and in California, and their claims on the basis of first exploration covered a vast area. In every direction they opposed the entrance of other nationalities. The lands were forced to pay tribute to Spain; nothing was left for local government, and these methods, the antithesis of home rule, were the undoing of this noble race. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [32] A valuable, handy volume on the early doings of the Spaniards is _Pioneer Spaniards in North America_, by William Henry Johnson. See also _The Discovery of America_, by John Fiske. [33] See _Relation of Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca_, translation by Buckingham Smith. _Contributions to the History of the South-western Portion of the U. S._, by A. F. Bandelier. "Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca," by Brownie Ponton and Bates H. McFarland, in the _Quarterly_ of the Texas State Historical Society (January, 1898). [34] Buckingham Smith, p. 102.