to take soundings in order to cross from one side to the other. Four or five leagues higher up, where there is the village of Christians, the river unites with the watercourse which we left behind yesterday.[42] It seems to me that in this plain there are islands and that it would not be difficult to have the horses and cattle cross by swimming and the people by boats, because the river falls very gently. This would be much easier than at the Strait of Carquinez, which is the only other possible place we have seen. All the tule swamp is impassable. Just here the river separates by way of two openings: one is that which we followed this morning; the other is closer to the mainland of the opposite shore. We are going to follow down the latter because it is the most direct. Here a cross was made with a chisel in an oak tree, about four inches wide and correspondingly long, about four varas high and in the point between the openings. Father Fray Ramón named the river San Juan Capistrano.[43] If anyone comes back to explore, he should follow upstream. On the return trip he should not take the entrance to the left, which is the one we have just come from, because the river is full of logs. The other one, even if it contains no logs, runs in the middle of the tule swamps, and in that region nothing can be accomplished[44] unless it be salmon fishing and beaver [trapping], although I have already said elsewhere that I saw only their traces. Here we stopped to eat, and at one o'clock in the afternoon we turned back and went around the entrance which, as has been said, leads, isolated, through numerous islands, all of which we have traversed since the 17th. The largest of these are the most deeply submerged. We cruised to the northwest, one-quarter north, for some five leagues, for downstream the boats travel considerably faster, and came upon a village called "Los Coyboses."[45] Seventy persons of all ages and sexes presented themselves. The village may hold nearly 180 persons but a message had been sent to them that we were coming, and it was evident that the rest had hidden themselves. They seem to be docile people. Father Fray Buenaventura baptized a sick boy and two women, one of them decrepit, the other very ill, for there are already from here a few Christians in the mission of San José. The bank of the river still has some oak trees, but from here downward the tule swamps begin again. We halted a league below the village, on a high spot along the river, where we slept.