CHAPTER VII.
Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock--By Trail to Diamond Creek, Havasupai Canyon, and the Moki Towns--Macomb Fails in an Attempt to Reach the Mouth of Grand River--James White's Masterful Fabrication.
Steam navigation on the Colorado was now successfully established, and when Lieutenant Ives was planning the exploration of the river there were already upon it two powerful steamers exactly adapted, through experience of previous disasters, to the peculiar dangers of these waters, while Johnson, the chief owner and pilot, had become an expert in handling a steamboat amid the unusual conditions.

He had succeeded in making a truce with the dragon.

And he had secured the friendship of the tribes of Amerinds living along the banks; his men and his property were safe anywhere; his steamers often carried jolly bands of Cocopas or of Yumas from place to place.

In arranging a government expedition to explore to the farthest point practicable for steamboats, the sensible course would have been to advise with Johnson and to charter his staunch steamer Colorado, together with himself, thus gaining at the very outset an immense double advantage: a boat perfectly modelled for the demands to be made upon it, and a guide entirely familiar with the tricks of the perfidious waters.

Especially important would this have been because Lieutenant Ives, who was instructed to direct this work, was ordered to accomplish it at the lowest and worst stage of the stream.