DAWN AND THE DONS 40
was closed by the remainder of the troops under Riveray Moncada, who convoyed the horse drove and the muledrove for relays. By the necessity of regulating marches with reference to watering places, camp was pitched early each afternoon, so that the land might be explored one day for the next; and at four days intervals, moreor
less general fatigue, or the recovery of animals stampeded by a coyote or the wind, compelled a halt more protracted.” For seventy-eight days, Portola and his fellow adventurers laboriously made their way through a country never before trodden by a white man’s foot, with mountain barriers and other natural obstacles, and watched by native tribes not always friendly. Indeed, shortly after Portola left San Diego, that camp was attacked by Indians of the Yuma tribe, and in the ensuing fight, two Yumas and one Spaniard were killed, and Vizcaino, the Franciscan, was wounded by an arrow that pierced his hand.
