“But because your Lordship commanded me that I should bring you the secret of that gulf, I resolved that although I had known I should have lost the ships, I would not have ceased for anything to have seen the head thereof, and therefore I commanded Nicolas Zamorano, Pilot Major, and Dominico del Castello that each of them should take a boat, and lead in their hands, and run in among those shoals, to see if they could find out a channel whereby the ships might enter in; to whom it seemed that the ships might sail up higher (although with great travail and danger), and in this sort I and he began to follow our way which they had taken, and within a short while after we found ourselves fast on the sands with all our three ships, in such sort that one could not help another, neither could the boats succour us because the current was so great that it was impossible for one of us to come to another. Whereupon we were in such great jeopardy that the deck of the Admiral was oftentimes under water; and if a great surge of the sea had not come and driven our ship right up and gave her leave, as it were, to breathe awhile, we had there been drowned; and likewise the other two ships found themselves in very great hazard, yet because they were lesser and drew less water their danger was not so great as ours. Now it pleased God upon the return of the flood that the ships came on float, and so we went forward. And although the company would have returned back, yet for all this I determined to go forward and to pursue our attempted voyage. And we passed forward with much ado, turning our stems now this way, now that way, to seek and find the channel. And it pleased God that after this sort we came to the very bottom of the bay, where we found a very mighty river, which ran with so great fury of a stream, that we could hardly sail against it.” Alarçon’s Ships Struggling With the Great Bore of the Colorado—1540. Alarçon’s Ships Struggling With the Great Bore of the Colorado—1540. Drawing by F.S. DELLENBAUGH. Here, then, began the acquaintance between the European and the river now known as the Colorado of the West. The experience of Alarçon was immediately typical of much that was to follow in the centuries of endeavour to arrive at an intimate knowledge of this savage torrent. CHAPTER II. The Unknown River—Alarçon Ascends it Eighty-five Leagues and Names it the Rio de Buena Guia—Melchior Diaz Arrives at its Banks Later and Calls it the Rio del Tizon—Cardenas Discovers the Grand Canyon.