In this same year I essayed to explore the Grand Canyon of the Colorado,
together with the upper canyons of that stream and the great canyons of
the lower portion of Green River. For this purpose I employed four
rowboats and made the descent from what is now Green River station
through the whole course of canyons to the mouth of the Rio Virgin, a
distance of more than a thousand miles.
[Illustration: From Kaibab Plateau, Looking South.]
In the spring of 1870 I again started with three boats and descended the
river to the Crossing of the Fathers, where I met a pack train and went
out with a party of men to explore ways down into the Grand Canyon from
the north, and devoted the summer, fall, winter, and following spring to
this undertaking.
In the summer of 1871 I returned to the rowboats and descended through
Marble Canyon to the Grand Canyon of Arizona, and then through the
greater part of the Grand Canyon itself. Subsequent years were then
given to exploration of the country adjacent to the Grand Canyon. On
these trips Mr. Gilbert, the geologist, who had been with Lieutenant
Wheeler, and Capt. C. E. Dutton, were my geological companions. On the
second boat trip, and during all the subsequent years of exploration in
this region, Prof. A. H. Thompson was my geographical companion,
assisted by a number of topographical engineers.
In 1882 Mr. C. D. Walcott, as my assistant in the United States
Geological Survey, went with me into the depths of the Grand Canyon. We
descended from the summit of the Kaibab Plateau on the north by a trail
which we built down a side canyon in a direction toward the mouth of the
Little Colorado River. The descent was made in the fall, and a small
party of men was left with Mr. Walcott in this region of stupendous
depths to make a study of the geology of an important region of
labyrinthian gorges. Here, with his party, he was shut up for the
winter, for it was known when we left him that snows on the summit of
the plateau would prevent his return to the upper region before the sun
should melt them the next spring. Mr. Walcott is now the Director of the
United States Geological Survey.
After this year I made no substantial additions to my geologic and
scenic knowledge of the Grand Canyon, though I afterward studied the
archæology to the south and east throughout a wide region of ruined
pueblos and cliff dwellings.
Since my first trip in boats many others have essayed to follow me, and
year by year such expeditions have met with disaster; some hardy
adventurers are buried on the banks of the Green, and the graves of
others are scattered at intervals along the course of the Colorado.
In 1889 the brave F. M. Brown lost his life. But finally a party of
railroad engineers, led by R. B. Stanton, started at the head of Marble
Canyon and made their way down the river as they extended a survey for a
railroad along its course.
Other adventurous travelers have visited portions of the Grand Canyon
region, and Mr. G. Wharton James has extended his travels widely over
the region in the interest of popular science and the new literature
created in the last decades of the nineteenth century. And now I once
more return to a reminiscent account of the Grand Canyon, for old men
love to talk of the past.