On this expedition he left San Julian's early in November (1782), with some of his own people, and a party of the Indians under their cacique. Proceeding westward, and inclining to the south, over hills and dales, at a distance of about twenty-five leagues they reached the Rio Chico, or little river, which the Indians said fell into the harbour of Santa Cruz. There was at that time no difficulty in fording it, the water not being much above their saddle-girths, and its width not above fifty yards, though, from the appearance of its steep and water-worn banks, it was evidently a much more considerable stream during the season of the floods. The Indians said it was the drain of a lake far in the north-west, formed by the melting of the snows in the Cordillera. So far, wherever they halted, they had found no lack of pasturage for their horses, or water, or brushwood for fuel; but after crossing the Chico the country became more rocky and barren: fourteen leagues beyond the Chico they came to a much more considerable river, called the Chalia by the Indians, who described it as issuing from another lake in the mountains, between the sources of the Rio Chico and those of the great river of Santa Cruz, which it joined, they said, further on. They found it too deep to cross where they first reached it, and were obliged in consequence to follow its course upwards for eight leagues, over a stony, rugged country, which lamed all their horses, and the desolate appearance of which was increased by the visitation of a flight of locusts which had devoured all the vegetation for three leagues. They crossed it, at last, at a place called Quesanexes by their Indian guides, from a remarkable rock standing out like a tower from the rocky, rugged cliffs which there bounded the bed of the river (some basaltic formation probably). On looking at the sketch, in the seventh volume of the "Journal of the Geographical Society," of Captain FitzRoy's Survey of the river Santa Cruz, it appears probable that the Chalia is the stream which runs into it from _basalt glen_, and which, though a very inconsiderable one at the season he passed by it, was manifestly one of much more importance at other times. Eight leagues after crossing the Chalia they came to the great lake under the Cordillera, which the Indians had talked of as the origin of the Santa Cruz River.