sario of New Mexico, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez, and the other ministro doctrinero of Zuñi, Silvestre Velez de Escalante, who set out from Santa Fé July 29, 1776, for the purpose of discovering a direct route to Monterey, on the seaboard of Alta California. New Mexico had now been known nearly two and a half centuries; the city of Santa Fé had been founded over a century and a half, Monterey had been occupied since 1770, and yet there had been opened no direct route westward with the sea, communication between Mexico and Santa Fé being by land, the road following the Rio Grande. In his memorial of March 1773, while in Mexico, Father Junípero Serra had urged that two expeditions be made, one from Sonora to California, which was carried out the following year by Captain Anza, and one from New Mexico to the sea, which Dominguez and Escalante now proposed to undertake. Again in 1775 Anza made a similar journey, this time leaving at the junction of the Colorado and Gila Father Garcés who ascended the former stream to the Mojave country, whence crossing to Mission San Gabriel he proceeded to the Tulare Valley. There he heard from the natives of a great river coming in from the east or north-east.[1] Indeed it was long the prevailing opinion that there existed such a stream in that vicinity. From the Tulare country Garcés returned to San Gabriel and Mojave, and thence proceeded to the villages of the Moquis. From this place he probably wrote to Santa Fé concerning the rumor of this river; for all through the journey of Dominguez and Escalante they were in search of it.[2]
- ↑ On Father Font's map, 1777, are laid down two rivers entering the region of the Tulare lakes from the north-east, one the Rio de San Phelipe, and the other called the Rio de que se Viene Noticia por el P. Garces. See Font's Journal, MS.; Serra, Memorial, March 1773, MS.; Garcés, Diario, 246–348; Forbes' Hist. Cal., 157–62; Arch. Cal., Prov. Rec., MS., i. 47–8, vi. 59; Palou, Not., ii. 281–2; Hist. Cal.; Hist. New Mex.; Hist. North Mex. States, this series.
- ↑ Probably it was the San Joaquin, or the Sacramento, of which they heard. Concerning a route from New Mexico to California Humboldt says: ‘En considérant les voyages hardis des premiers conquerans espagnols au
