This seems to have been the very first visit of Europeans to the mouth of the Colorado, but as Ulloa did not see the river, and only surmised that there might be one there, it cannot be considered in any way a discovery. It has been supposed by some that Friar Juan de la Asumpcion, in 1538, might have reached the Colorado in his deep river which he could not cross, but this river was more likely a branch of the Yaqui, for the friar was told that ten days beyond, to the north, there was another larger river settled by many people, whose houses had three stories, and whose villages were enclosed. This describes the Rio Grande and its southern settlements perfectly, so that, had he been on the Colorado, or even the Gila, the Rio Grande could not have been described as “ten days to the north.” Ulloa took possession formally, according to Spanish custom, and then sailed southward again. Though he had not found the great river, he had determined one important geographical point: that Lower California was not, as had been supposed, an island, but was a peninsula; nevertheless for a full century thereafter it was considered an island. Had Ulloa followed up the rush of the current he would have been the discoverer of the Colorado River, but in spite of his marvelling at the fury of it he did not seem to consider an investigation worth while; or he may have been afraid of wrecking his ships. His inertia left it for a bolder man, who was soon in his wake. But the intrepid soul of Cortes must have been sorely disappointed at the meagre results of this, his last expedition, which had cost him a large sum, and compelled the pawning of his wife’s jewels. The discovery of the mouth of a great river would have bestowed on this voyage a more romantic importance, and would consequently have been somewhat healing to his injured pride, if not to his depleted purse; but his sun was setting. This voyage of Ulloa was its last expiring ray. With an artistic adjustment to the situation that seems remarkable, Ulloa, after turning the end of the peninsula and sailing up the Lower Californian coast, sent home one solitary vessel, and vanished then forever. Financially wrecked, and exasperated to the last degree by the slights and indignities of his enemies and of the Mendoza government, Cortes left for Spain early in 1540 with the hope of retrieving his power by appearing in person before the monarch. As in the case of Columbus, scant satisfaction was his, and the end was that the gallant captain, whose romantic career in the New World seems like a fairy tale, never again saw the scene of his conquests. Wytfliet-Ptolemy Map of 1597. Wytfliet-Ptolemy Map of 1597. From BANCROFT’S _History of Arizona and New Mexico_.