The next operation would be to tow it back to some low place, where the animals on it could be put ashore.

This is a sample of the difficulties always encountered in crossing when the river was at flood.
From Yuma looking northward the river can be traced for about fifteen miles before it is lost in the mountains.

See cut on page 26.

Bartlett desired to explore scientifically down to the mouth, but the government failed to grant him the privilege.

He and Major Emory were not on good terms and there was a great deal of friction about all the boundary work, arising chiefly from the appointment of a civilian commissioner.
Bartlett mentions Leroux's "late journey down the Colorado," on which occasion he met with some Cosninos, but just where he started from is not stated, though it was certainly no higher up than the mouth of the Grand Wash.
In 1852 the steamer Uncle Sam was brought out on a schooner from San Francisco and put together at the mouth of the river, but after a few months she most strangely went to the bottom, while her owner, Turnbull, was on the way from San Francisco with new machinery for her.