History of Utah, 1540-1886 - Brigham Young University

8
DISCOVERIES OF THE SPANIARDS.
sario of New Mexico, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez,
and the other ministro doctrinero of Zuhi, Silvestre
Velez de Escalante, who set out from Santa Fe 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 Fe 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 Fe being by land, the
road following the Rio Grande. In his memorial of
March 1773, while in Mexico, Father Junipero 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 Garces 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 northeast.
2 Indeed it was long the prevailing opinion that
there existed such a stream in that vicinity. From
the Tulare country Garces returned to San Gabriel
and Mojave, and thence proceeded to the villages of
the Moquis. From this place he probably wrote to
Santa Fe concerning the rumor of this river; for all
through the journey of Dominguez and Escalante
they were in search of it. 3
2 On Father Font's map, 1777, are laid clown two rivers entering the region
of the Tulare lakes from the north-east, one the Rio de Scm Phelipe, and the
other called the Rio de que se Viene Noticia por el P. Garce*. See Font's
Journal, MS.; Serra, Memorial, March 1773, MS.; Garcis, Dkirio, -J46-34S;
Forbes' Hist. Cal., L57-62; Arch. Cal., Prov. Kec, MS., i. 47-8, vi. 59;
Palou, Not., ii. 'JS1--J; Hid. Cal.; Hist. New Mex.; Hid. North Mix. States,
this series.
8 Probably it was the San Joaquin, or the Sacramento, of which they
heard. ( loncerning a route from New Mexico to California Humboldt says:
' En considerant les voyages hardis des premiers conquerans espagnols au