Hamblin had about as many trips as Sindbad the Sailor and about as many
adventures. Of course, he had to take the Hopi visitors home, and on this
errand he started from St. George on March 18, 1863, with a party of six
white men, including Gibbons, Haskell, Hatch and McConnell. They took the
western route and found a better crossing, later called Pearce's Ferry.
At this point they were overtaken by Lewis Greeley, a nephew of Horace
Greeley of the New York Tribune, who had been sent on to the river by
Erastus Snow.
A trail was taken to the left of the former route. This trail very
clearly was the main thoroughfare used by the Wallapai into Cataract
Canyon, which was so known at that time. Down the trail, into the abysmal
"voladero" of Father Garces, they traveled a day and part of another,
leading their horses most of the way. In many places they could not have
turned their animals around had they wished to do so.
Cataract Canyon, the home of the Hava-Supai, is a veritable Yosemite,
with craggy walls that rise nearly 3000 feet to the mesa above. Hamblin
especially noted the boiling from the bottom of the canyon of a
beautiful large spring, the same which today irrigates the lands of the
well-disposed Indians. These Indians gave assistance to the party and
told of an attack made a short time before by Apaches from the southeast,
who had been met in a narrow pass where several of their number had been
slain. Assuring the Hava-Supai they would send no enemies into their
secret valley, Hamblin led his party to the eastward, up the Tope-Kobe
trail to the plateau. This was reached April 7. Though along the Moqui
trail at no point were they very far from the Grand Canyon, that gorge
was not noted in Hamblin's narrative, for the brethren were not
sight-seeing. A few days later they were in the Hopi towns, to which the
three much-traveled Indians preceded them, in eagerness to see their
people again.
Only two days were spent with the Indians and on April 15, taking
Haskell, Hatch and McConnell, the party struck toward the southwest, to
find the Beale road. On the 20th, Greeley discovered a pond of clear cold
water several acres in extent in the crater of a volcanic peak. The San
Francisco peaks were passed, left to the southward, and the Beale road
was struck six miles west of LeRoux Springs, the later site of Fort
Moroni, seven miles northwest of the present Flagstaff.
The Beale road was followed until the 28th. Thence, the men suffered
thirst, for 56 hours being without water. Ten of their eighteen horses
were stolen. This, it was explained, was due to the failure of the
Hava-Supai to return Wallapai horses which the men had left in Cataract
Canyon on the outward journey. St. George was reached May 13, 1863. The
main result had been the exploration of a practicable, though difficult,
route for wagons from St. George to the Little Colorado and to the Hopi
towns.