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Show "ESCALANTE IN DIXIE AND ARIZONA STRIP" By Dr. 'ibeit Eugene Bolton. Ph. D. University of California. (From Escalante's Diaryl We set out from San Huroiino. down the west side of the river and along the sk r,s of some adjacent ad-jacent hills, and having crr.e t vo and a half leagues to the snutr-soutnwest. snutr-soutnwest. we returned to the bhnks and the Cottonwood grove of the river. ilscahinte continued alone 'he v-st side of Ash crock and e-n 'lie -d;.ircnt skr.es. The eo-ior-n! grove here lie found rraiie was a rrrt c-:tinee st.v tic frrks cf A.-h creek and L Vrr-fc.n Vrr-fc.n cretk. There are co,-:: r.n ari "rev ari al"..iv..il b'ttom lar.ci at th.s 7':r.t en t 'h orMr.s. La Ve-k.n cre'k ;c.:.s Arh cr" k ;.o" a -hrrt ci -t r.e a'x-.e to" :.;r.r- ', rr. r f f -o "' r.rr." i :r- .7.1 h ( -i : .'- - . . . " :r ' ' r .-: . . 4 - o . t ESCALANTE (Continued from page 1) the application of these people to the cultivation of the soil, and because be-cause we found this much done toward reducing them to civilized life and to the faith when the Most High may so dispose, for it is well known how much it costs to bring other Indians to this point, and how difficult it is to convert them to live for the most part in civilized life and in towns. From here down the stream, and on the mesas on both sides for a long distance, according to what we learned, these Indians live and apply themselves to the cultivation of maize and calabashes. cala-bashes. In their own language Shey are called Parrusi. . (Along the Virgin for some distance dis-tance and on Santa Clara creek, in the vicinity of St. George, there are good bottom lands, where there were Indian settlements when the Mbrmon immigrants arrived. ar-rived. These river Indians still call themselves Parusis, as one of them told me in June. 1927. This may be just a form of the name Paiutes, but my informant insisted insist-ed that Parusis was a special name for the Virgin river people. The Paiutes are still numerous in the southern part of Utah. Living on different reservations. On June 23 we met numerous automobile loads of them driving eastward.) We continued down stream toward to-ward the south, and havin ; gone fa a If a league we inclined toward the southwest, leaving the river, but a deep gorge without descent obliged us to turn back more than a quarter of a league, until we again reached the river. Here it runs toward the southwest, and ' r- two other small rivers join it. one comnig from the north-northeast north-northeast and the other from the east. The latter, for the greater part, is -composed of hot and sulphurous sul-phurous water, and we therefore named it Sulphur river. (In this march' they passed the forks, reached the Virgin river at the deep gorge, and returned a quarter of a league to the forks of Ash creek and the Virgin. A mile or so above the junction near the town of La Verkin, are the famous hot springs which boil out of the rocks with great volume and strong odor, giving a sulphurous sulphur-ous taste to the water for a long distance down stream.) Here there is a beautiful grove of large' black cotton woods and some willows, besides vines of wild grapes. In the distance which we retraced there are ash cones, veins snd other indications of minerals, and many stones with reddish mica. We crossed the Pilar river and Ihe Sulphur near the place where they join, and going south we as- j tended a low mesa between cliffs j of black and shiny rock. (The very trail up which they . climbed, right at the junction, is j easily identified from his descrip- j tion. They proceeded south over j the ground now occupied by the city of Hurricane.) . I Having reached the top we entered en-tered good open country and crossed cross-ed a small plain which his toward the east a chain of very high fr.es-M and to the we.st hills of red j eaud . covered with Chamisc, or what is called heather in Spain. (The chain cf very high mesas is the famous Hurricane ridge which begins just north of here and extends south- to the Colorado river. During the most of this distance dis-tance it presents a steep western front, several hundred feet high and most difficult of ascent. Es-calante Es-calante traveled' near the foot of it. for nearly fifty miles.) We might have continued in the plain along the edge of the mesa and finished our journey over good level country, but those who went ahead turned aside to follow some fresh tracks of Indians, In-dians, leading us over the sand hills and flats already mentioned, in which the horses became tired out. Having previously gone south two leagues along the mesa and the plain, we traveled over these hills three leagues to the southwest. south-west. We now turned south for a little more than two leagues, when we beheld a small valley surrounded sur-rounded by mesas, on one of which we were perched, not being able to go down to the valley. On the mesa there was neither water nor pasture for the horses and they were now unable to travel, so we were forced to descend along a high and very stony escarpment. escarp-ment. (They slid down the south end of the red ridge on which they had been traveling, and continued a short distance south to Fort Pierce creek. In the neighborhood is Fort spring, but from Escalante's description there seems to have been rain water in several places. Escalante correctly tells us that if he had not been led off to the southwest by the scouts he might have traveled from the river crossing cross-ing straight south along the foot of Hurricane ridge. This is the route which we followed in 1926. By our speedometer it was nearly twenty miles from Hurricane to the Arizona line, although by air line it is considerably less. Camp San Donulo was on Fort Pierce creek, not far from the Arizona boundary line. I am told that tamaracks are Still found in places, .'''vofr the wash, but I did not see any.) Hiving gone onree-fourths of a league to the south we halted, the sun having already set, at an ar-royo ar-royo where we found large pools of good water, with pasturage sufficient suf-ficient for the horses. We named the place San Donulo or Arroyo del Taray, because here there were some of these tamarack trees. We made an observation by the polar star and found ourselves in 36 degrees 52 minutes and 30 seconds sec-onds latitude. Today ten leagues, which by a direct route would be seven leagues to the south-southwest. |