A Canyon of Cataracts—The Imperial Chasm—Short Rations—A Split in the
Party—Separation—Fate of the Howlands and Dunn—The Monster Vanquished.
Powell’s winter of investigation had probably given him a good idea of
what kind of rapids might be expected in the formations composing the
canyons as far as the mouth of Grand River, but he now had confronting
him water which for aught he could tell might indulge in plunges of a
hundred feet or more at one time, between absolutely vertical walls.
And the aspect of the surroundings at the junction of the Green and the
Grand is not reassuring. It is a barren and dismal place, with no
footing but a few sand-banks that are being constantly cut away and
reformed by the whirling current, except on their higher levels where a
few scrawny hackberry trees and weeds find room to continue a
precarious existence. To get out of or into this locality either by
climbing the cliffs or by navigating the rivers is a difficult feat,
and to trust oneself to the current blindly rushing down toward the sea
is even worse, more especially so on the occasion of this first descent
when all beyond was a complete blank. But the party faced the future
bravely and cheerfully. They climbed out at two points on tours of
inspection of the country above, while some took the opportunity to
overhaul the supply of rations, which, having been so often wet, was
seriously damaged. The flour was musty and full of hard lumps. To
eliminate the lumps, therefore, they screened it with a piece of
mosquito netting for a sieve; at the same time they eliminated more
than two hundred pounds of the precious freight and threw this away, a
foolish proceeding, for by proper cooking it might have been utilised
for food. Together with the losses by the wreck of the _No-Name_ and
other mishaps, and with what had been consumed, their food-supply was
now reduced from the original ten-months’ amount to a two-months’
quantity, though they had not yet been on the way quite sixty days;
that is, they had used up eight months’ supplies in two months,
including a mountain sheep and a deer the hunters had brought down, and
they were barely more than half-way to the end of the journey. At this
alarming rate they would be starving long before they saw the walls of
the Grand Canyon break away.
Junction of the Grand and Green. Junction of the Grand and Green.
On the surface; bare rock.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
In Cataract Canyon. In Cataract Canyon.
Highest Walls in this canyon 2700 feet.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Nevertheless no thought of pursuing any course but the one planned
occurred to them, and on July 21st they cast off from the sand-banks
and were carried rapidly down on the swift torrent of the Great
Colorado. They had not gone far before plenty hard work was furnished,
in the shape of two portages were necessary to pass particularly
dangerous places, and numerous bad rapids to run. In the afternoon the
_Emma Dean_, in attempting to navigate one of the more
favourable-looking foaming descents, was swamped, pitching Powell and
the others headlong into the roaring flood. They were fortunately able
to cling to the boat till they floated into more tranquil waters, where
they managed to climb on board, signalling the other boats to land
before the plunge. This they could do, and the boats were brought down
by a portage, which took all the rest of the day. The approach of
darkness compelled a halt for the night on some rocks where they had
barely room enough to lie down. Three much-needed oars had been lost
with the capsize of the _Dean_. These were sadly missed in the rough
water that surrounded them the following day, so at the first large
pile of driftwood they made a landing and secured a cottonwood log for
oar-timber. While the oars were making, Powell and his brother climbed
up to where some pinyon trees were seen growing, and collected a
quantity of gum with which to calk the leaky boats. They needed all the
preparation possible, for the rapids now came ever thicker, ever
faster, and more violent. The walls also grew in altitude from the
thirteen hundred feet of the Junction to fifteen hundred feet, then to
eighteen hundred feet, nearly vertical in places.
An examination of the barometric record was now made to see how much
they had by this time descended toward sea-level, and, by comparison,
about what might be expected in the river below. The conclusion was
that though great descents were still ahead, if the fall should be
distributed in rapids and short drops, as it had been above, and not
concentrated great plunges, they would meet with success. But there in
always remained the possibility of arriving on the brink of some high
fall where no footing on either side could be obtained, and where a
fierce current would prohibit a return. In such a case the exploration
would have ended then and there. The newspapers before this time had
printed a story of the expedition’s collapse. The outer world supposed
that Powell and all his men but one had been destroyed, though A. H.
Thompson wrote to the _Chicago Inter-Ocean_, which first published it,
showing its absurdity. Mrs. Powell heard the story at her father’s home
in Detroit and she pronounced it a fabrication, for she had received a
letter subsequent to the date given for the destruction of the party.
She also had faith in her husband’s judgment, caution, and good sense,
so she refused to accept the tale at all, which was circulated by a man
who had started from Green River Station, and who, by “pitching” this
picturesque yarn, secured the sympathy and the purses of the passengers
on an east-bound Union Pacific train. He told how Powell and all the
men but himself had been suddenly swallowed up in an awful place, dark
and gloomy and full of fearful whirlpools, called Brown’s Hole. From
the shore, where he alone had remained, he had despairingly witnessed
the party disappear in a mighty whirlpool never to rise again. But he
made a mistake, so far as Mrs. Powell was concerned, in naming the
spot. She knew very well that there was no danger whatever in Brown’s
Hole, and that the river in this pretty park was the quietest on the
whole course. But for its inventor the yarn had fulfilled its purpose,
and he found himself east of the Mississippi, where he wanted to be,
with a pocket full of dollars. A week or two after the story appeared
letters were received from Powell via the Uinta Agency. These
positively proved the falsity of the tale.
The Craggs at Millecrag Bend, foot of Cataract Canyon. The Craggs at
Millecrag Bend, foot of Cataract Canyon.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
The Music Temple Alcove, Glen Canyon. The Music Temple Alcove, Glen
Canyon.
So called because the men of Powell’s first expedition sang in the
place. On entering one finds a huge cavern. Here the men who were later
killed by the Shewits carved their names.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
On the fourth day in Cataract Canyon three portages were compulsory at
the very outset to pass safely over a stretch where the waters tumbled
seventy-five feet in three quarters of a mile, and at the end of this
three quarters of a mile they camped again, worn out by the severe
toil. Rapids now came with even greater frequency, between walls more
than two thousand feet high and often nearly vertical from the water.
On the 27th a flock of mountain sheep was discovered on the rocks not
more than one hundred feet above their heads. The game did not see the
hunters, who landed quickly in a convenient cove, and two fat sheep
were added to the rapidly diminishing larder. On the next day they were
startled by the sudden closing in of the walls, till the canyon, now
nearly three thousand feet deep, became very narrow, with the river
filling the chasm from one blank cliff to the other. The water was also
swift and the canyon winding, so that it was not possible to see ahead.
Powell was much disturbed lest they should run upon some impassable
fall, but luckily in about a mile and a half they emerged again into a
more broken gorge without having had the least difficulty. He justly
remarks that after it was done it seemed a simple thing to run through
such a place, but the first doing of it was fraught with keen anxiety.
In the late afternoon of this same day, they came to the end of the
forty-one miles of Cataract Canyon, marked by a deep canyon-valley
entering from the left at a sharp bend where millions of crags,
pinnacles, and towers studded the summit of the right-hand wall, now
again thirteen hundred feet high. It was called Millecrag Bend, either
then, or on the second expedition. A new canyon immediately formed; a
narrow, straight canyon, with walls terraced above and vertical below.
The thirteen hundred feet of altitude speedily diminished and in nine
miles the voyagers were at the end. Low walls again began, forming the
head of the next canyon of the series. Presently they arrived at the
mouth of a river flowing in from the right, or west. The pilot boat ran
up into this stream, and as the water of the Colorado had been
particularly muddy, the men were eager to discover clear, sparkling
affluents and springs. One behind shouted, “How is she, Jack?” and Jack
sententiously replied, “Oh, she’s a dirty devil!” and by this title the
river was long called, and probably is still so known in that region,
though on the maps it was afterwards changed by Powell to Frémont
River, in honour of the Pathfinder.
They were now in the beginning of what has since been called Glen
Canyon. Powell at first gave the name of Mound to the upper half, and
Monument to the lower, but after 1871 Glen was substituted for the
whole. On July 31st they passed the mouth of the San Juan, which enters
through a canyon similar to that of the main river, about a thousand
feet deep. They tried to climb out near this point, but failed to
accomplish it. The next day they made camp in one of the peculiar
alcoves or glens from which the canyon is named, worn by the waters
into the homogeneous sandstone composing the walls. This particular
glen is a beautiful spot. The wide entrance contains a number of
cottonwood trees, and passing these one finds himself in a huge cavern
some five hundred feet wide and two hundred feet high, with a narrow
slit leading up to the sky, and extending back far beyond the limits of
the glen. The men found this a delightful place. They sang songs, and
their voices sounded so well that they bestowed upon the cavern the
name of Music Temple. It now holds a special interest because three of
them, O. G. Rowland, Seneca Howland, and William Dunn, carved their
names on a smooth face of rock, and it forms their eternal monument,
for these three never saw civilisation again.
The Depths of the Grand Canyon at Sunset. The Depths of the Grand
Canyon at Sunset.
Studio painting by F.S. DELLENBAUGH, in the possession of Prof. A.H.
Thompson, who considers it the best representation of the canyon from
below that he has seen, “the truest—far better than any photograph
because more comprehensive.”
For 149 miles the easy waters of Glen Canyon bore them along, and by
August 4th they had passed the Crossing of the Fathers, or Ute Ford, as
it was called in that country before its identification as the point
where Escalante crossed, and were at the mouth of the Paria, since 1873
better known as Lee’s Ferry. They had now before them the grandest of
all the gorges, though only two hundred feet deep at the beginning; but
they had not proceeded far into it before the walls ran rapidly up
while the river ran rapidly down. Numerous falls appeared, one
following another in quick succession, necessitating portages and much
hard work. When Powell managed to climb out on the 7th, the walls had
grown to twenty-three hundred feet. They soon increased to about
thirty-five hundred feet, often vertical on one or the other side at
the water, and even in the upper portions extremely precipitous. By the
10th they had reached the mouth of the Little Colorado, where White’s
imagination had pictured the greatest terror of the whole river, and
the end of all the dangerous part. The walls of this tributary are, as
is usually the case, the same as those of the main gorge, but the
stream itself was small, muddy, and saline. Powell walked up it three
or four miles, having no trouble in crossing it by wading when
desirable. He called the new gorge now before him, really only a
continuation of the one ending with the canyon of the Little Colorado,
the “Great Unknown,” and a party some twenty years later, emulating the
early Spaniards in the art of forgetting, called it the same, but it
was the Great Unknown only once, and that was when Powell on this
occasion first faced the sublime, unfathomed depths that here lay in
his course. Only one month’s rations remained as a reliance in this
terrible passage. Powell says: “We have an unknown distance yet to run;
an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are we know not; what
rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walk rise over the river, we
know not.... The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied
about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is sombre and the jests
are ghastly.” With anxiety and much misgiving they drifted on between
mile-high cliffs, rising terrace on terrace to the very sky itself.
Even now, when the dangers are known and tested, no man lives who can
enter the great chasm for a voyage to the other end without feeling
anxiety as to the result, and the more anxiety he feels, the more
probability there is that he will pass the barriers safely. Running
rapids and passing falls by portages and let-downs, they met no
formidable obstacle till August 14th, when they ran into a granite
formation, the “First Granite Gorge.” While the gorge was wide above,
it grew narrower as the river level was approached, till the walls were
closer than anywhere farther up; and they were ragged and serrated.
They had noticed that hard rocks had produced bad river, and soft rocks
smooth water; now they were in a series of rocks harder than any before
encountered. There was absolutely no way of telling what the waters
might do in such a formation, which ran up till a thousand feet of it
stood above their heads, supporting more than four thousand feet more
of sedimentary rocks, making a grand total of between five thousand and
six thousand feet. The same day on which they entered the granite they
arrived, after running, and portaging around, several bad rapids, at a
terrific fall, announced by a loud roar like the steady boom of
Niagara, reverberating back and forth from wall to wall, and filling
the whole gorge with its ominous note. The river was beaten to a solid
sheet of reeling foam for a third of a mile. There was but one choice,
but one path for the boats, and that lay through the midst of it, for
on each side the waves pounded violently against the jagged cliffs
which so closely hemmed them in. Men might climb up to the top of the
granite and find their way around the obstruction, one thousand feet
above it, descending again a mile or two down, but they could not take
the boats over such a road. They must, therefore, run the place, a fall
of about eighty feet in the third of a mile, or give up the descent. So
they got into their boats and started on the smooth waters, so soon
shattered into raging billows. Though filled with water, the boats all
rode successfully and came out below crowned with success. Often a
rapid is greatly augmented by enormous boulders which have been washed
into the river from some side canyon, and, acting like a dam, block the
water up and cause it to roar and fret tenfold more. Black and dismal
is this granite gorge; sharp and terrible the rapids, whose sheeted
foam becomes fairly iridescent by contrast. The method of working
around some of the worst places is illustrated well by the following
extract:
“We land and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall. It seems
possible to let down with lines, at least part of the way, from point
to point, along the right-hand wall. So we make a portage over the
first rocks, and find footing on some boulders below. Then we let down
one of the boats to the end of her line, when she reaches a corner of
the projecting rock, to which one of the men clings and steadies her,
while I examine an eddy below. I think we can pass the other boats down
by us, and catch them in the eddy. This is soon done and the men in the
boats in the eddy pull us to their side. On the shore of this little
eddy there is about two feet of gravel beach above water. Standing on
this beach, some of the men take a line of the little boat and let it
drift down against another projecting angle. Here is a little shelf on
which a man from my boat climbs, and a shorter line is passed to him,
and he fastens the boat to the side of the cliff. Then the second one
is let down, bringing the line of the third. When the second boat is
tied up, the two men standing on the beach above spring into the last
boat, which is pulled up alongside ours. Then we let down the boats,
for twenty-five or thirty yards, by walking along the shelf, landing
them again in the mouth of a side canyon. Just below this there is
another pile of boulders, over which we make another portage. From the
foot of these rocks we can climb to another shelf, forty or fifty feet
above the water. On this bench we camp for the night. We find a few
sticks, which have lodged in the rocks. It is raining hard, and we have
no shelter, but kindle a fire and have our supper. We sit on the rocks
all night, wrapped in our ponchos, getting what sleep we can.”
The Grand Canyon. The “Sockdologer” Rapid. The Grand Canyon. The
“Sockdologer” Rapid.
Fall of about eighty feet in one third of a mile.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
At this season of the year there is a good deal of cloudy and rainy
weather in the Grand Canyon region, and this makes the gorge decidedly
gloomy when one is compelled to stay in it and descend the river. The
next morning with two hours of similar manoeuvring the rapid was
passed. The same day they found a stretch where the river was so swift
the boats were tossed from side to side like feathers, entirely
unmanageable. Here they met with another rapid and two of the boats
were in such a position they could not escape running it. But they went
through without damage. Then the third crew tried to reach land, and
succeeded, only to find that there was no foot-hold. They pushed out
again, to be overwhelmed by a powerful wave which filled the boat full.
She drifted helpless through several breakers and one of these capsized
her. The men hung to the side, the only thing to do in the Colorado
unless one has on a life preserver (and even then it is advisable), as
she drifted down to the other boats, where she was caught and righted.
It has always seemed strange to me that Powell on this crucial
expedition did not provide himself and his men with cork life-jackets,
a precaution that suggests itself immediately in such an undertaking.
No one ought ever to attempt a descent without them.
Bottom of the Grand Canyon. Bottom of the Grand Canyon.
Looking down from foot of Bright Angel Trail.
Photograph by MITCHELL PRUDDEN.
The next day they reached a clear little stream coming in through a
deep canyon on the right, and because they had honoured the devil by
conferring his name on a river higher up, Powell concluded to honour
the good spirits by calling this Bright Angel River. In its narrow
valley ruined foundations of houses and fragments of pottery were
discovered. There were also indications of old trails by which the
builders had made their way about. By the 17th of August, the rations
were reduced to musty flour enough for ten days, a few dried apples,
and plenty of coffee. The bacon had spoiled and was thrown away. Now
the problem of food was a paramount consideration. Should they be
detained by many bad places, they might be forced by the food question
to abandon the river, if possible, and strike for the Mormon
settlements lying to the north. The barometers were rendered useless,
so that they could not determine the altitude to see what proportion of
descent still remained ahead. They hoped, however, that the worst was
behind. They now carefully divided evenly among the boats the little
stock of flour, so that, in case of disaster, all of it should not be
lost at once. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and the dark
outlook, Powell never failed in his wonderful poise of mind and balance
of nerve. But he was anxious, and he sang sometimes as they sailed
along till the men, he once told me, he believed thought he had gone
crazy. Of course the singing was more or less a mask for his real
feelings.
In the Midst of a Grand Canyon Rapid. In the Midst of a Grand Canyon
Rapid.
Studio painting by F.S. DELLENBAUGH.
On the 19th the pioneer boat, running some distance ahead of the
others, was again upset by a wave. As usual the men succeeded in
clinging to the upturned craft, the closed compartments always keeping
the boat afloat, and were carried down through another rapid. The
companion boats were detained by whirlpools and could not quickly go to
the rescue, but when they finally did reach the _Dean_, she was bailed
out, the men climbed on board of her again, and they all went on
without even trying to land. The next day, in one hour, they ran on a
wild dashing river ten miles without stopping, and, what was to them
most important, they ran out of the granite. The bright colours of the
sedimentary rocks put new cheer into them. On they ran, down the narrow
canyon, now about three thousand feet deep, always on swift water, but
for a time there were no bad rapids. On August 25th they reached a fall
where the river was once dammed up for a great height by an overflow of
lava from craters on and near the brink. One of the craters was plainly
visible from below. The canyon appeared to have been once filled by the
lava to the depth of fifteen hundred feet. They named the descent Lava
Falls and made a portage. Not far below this they found a garden which
had been planted by the Shewits Pai Utes living on the plateau above.
The corn was not ripe, though some squashes were, and helping
themselves to a few of these they ran on to a comfortable place and had
a feast.
The Grand Canyon-Granite Buttresses. The Grand Canyon-Granite
Buttresses.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
So well did they now get on, running rapids and making fine time, that
they began to look forward with great hope to a speedy termination of
the canyon. When therefore the river took an unexpected turn towards
the south and the lower formations once more began to appear, till the
black granite, dreaded and feared, closed again threateningly about
them, they were considerably disheartened. At the very beginning they
were compelled to make a portage. Then they reached a place which
appeared worse than anything they had yet seen. This was partly due to
the condition of the men and it was partly a fact. They could discover
no way to portage or to let down, and Powell believed running it meant
certain destruction. They climbed up and along on the granite for a
mile or two, but there appeared no hope for success. In trying to
secure an advantageous position from which to view the fall Powell
worked himself into a position where he could neither advance nor
retreat. His situation was most precarious. The men were obliged to
bring oars from the boats four hundred feet below, to brace into the
rocks in order to get him safely back. The absence of his right arm
made climbing sometimes very difficult for him. This was on the side
opposite their first landing. Descending, they recrossed the river and
spent the whole afternoon trying to decide on a plan. At last Powell
reached a decision. It was to lower the boats over the first portion, a
fall of eighteen or twenty feet, then hug the right cliff to a point
just above the second drop, where they could enter a little chute, and
having passed this point they were to pull directly across the stream
to avoid a dangerous rock below. He told the men his intention of
running the rapid the next morning, and they all crossed the river once
more to a landing where it was possible to camp.
New and serious trouble now developed. The elder Howland remonstrated
with Powell against proceeding farther by the river and advised the
abandonment of the enterprise altogether. At any rate, he and his
brother and William Dunn would not go on in the boats. Powell sat up
that night plotting out his course and concluded from it that the mouth
of the Virgen could not be more than forty-five miles away in a
straight line. Calculating eighty or ninety miles by the river, and
allowing for the open country he knew existed below the end of the
Grand Canyon, he concluded that they must soon reach the mouth and be
able to find the Mormon settlements about twenty miles up the Virgen
River. Then he awoke Howland and explained the situation, and they
talked it over. The substance of this talk is not stated, but Howland
went to sleep again while Powell paced the sand till dawn, pondering on
the best course to take. The immediate danger of the rapid he thought
could be overcome with safety, but what was below? To climb out here,
even were it possible, was to reach the edge of a desert with the
nearest Mormon town not less than seventy-five miles distant, across an
unknown country. So heavily did this situation weigh upon him that he
almost concluded to abandon the river and try the chance on the top,
but then he says: “For years I have been contemplating this trip. To
leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the
canyon which I cannot explore, having already almost accomplished it,
is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on.” So
he awoke Walter Powell and explained to him Howland’s decision. Walter
agreed to stand by him, and so did Sumner, Hawkins, Bradley, and Hall.
The younger Howland wished to remain, but would not desert his brother.
O. G. Howland was determined to leave the river, and Dunn was with him.
I have never met any of the men of this party except Powell and his
brother Walter, so I have no other account of the affair than the one
just stated, which is from Powell’s Report, and is the same that he
gave me orally before that Report was printed. Walter Powell never
mentioned the subject, or in any way suggested to me that there was
anything behind the version of Powell. But others have. They have said
that the real cause of the break was an incompatibility between Powell
and the elder Howland. It is quite possible that Powell may have
discovered Howland _persona non grata_, but had this been as serious as
some have said, Howland would not have waited, it seems to me, till
they came to a particularly bad-looking place to take his departure. At
any rate, that was a long night for Powell, and whatever the main cause
of Howland’s leaving was, it was a trying ordeal for the leader.
Howland’s obligation certainly was to go on as if he were an enlisted
soldier, and he evidently failed in this duty. When daylight finally
came a solemn breakfast was prepared and eaten. No one had much heart.
The river was then crossed again to the north side. The decision of the
three men to leave rendered one boat useless, and the poorest, the
_Dean_, which was a pine boat, was left behind. Two rifles and a
shotgun were given to the men who were leaving, but their share of the
rations they refused to take, being sure they could secure all the game
they required. Their calculations were correct enough, and they would
have arrived at the settlements had not an unforeseen circumstance
prevented. When the river party were ready to start the three deserters
helped lift the two boats over a high rock and down past the first
fall. Then they parted. Powell wrote a letter to his wife which Howland
took, Sumner gave him his watch with directions that it be sent to his
sister in the event of the river party being annihilated, and the
duplicate records of the trip were separated, one set being given to
Howland, who at the last begged them not to go on down the river,
assuring them that a few miles more of such river as that now ahead of
them would consume the last of the scant rations and then it would be
too late to try to escape. In fact each party thought the other was
taking the more desperate chance. By a mistake the duplicate records
were wrongly divided, each party having portions of both sets. This
afterwards made gaps in the river data below the Paria as far as
Catastrophe Rapid. Powell entered the _Maid of the Canyon_ and pulled
away while the departing men stood on an overhanging crag looking on.
Both boats succeeded in going through without accident, and it was then
apparent that the place was not so bad as it looked and that they had
run many that were worse. Down below it they waited for a couple of
hours hoping the men would change their minds, take the _Dean_, and
come on. But they were never seen again by white men. They climbed up
the mighty cliffs to the summit of the Shewits Plateau, about
fifty-five hundred feet, and that it is a hard climb I can testify, for
I climbed down and back not far above this point. At length they were
out of the canyon, and they must have rejoiced at leaving those gloomy
depths behind. Northward they went, to a large water-pocket, a
favourite camping-ground of the Shewits, a basin in the rocky channel
of an intermittent stream, discharging into the Colorado. The only
story of their fate was obtained from these Utes. Jacob Hamblin of
Kanab learned it from some other Utes and afterwards got the story from
them. They received the men at their camp and gave them food. During
the night some of the band came in from the north and reported certain
outrages by miners in that country. It was at once concluded that these
whites were the culprits and that they never came down the Colorado as
they claimed. In the morning, therefore, a number secreted themselves
near the edge of the water-pocket. The trail to the water leads down
under a basaltic cliff perhaps thirty or forty feet high, as I remember
the spot, which I visited about six years later. As the unfortunate men
turned to come up from filling their canteens, they were shot down from
ambush. In consequence I have called this the Ambush Water-pocket.[1]
The guns, clothing, etc., were appropriated by the Shewits, and I
believe it was through one of the watches that the facts first leaked
out. I have always had a lurking suspicion that the Shewits were glad
of an excuse (if they had one at the time) for killing the men. When I
was there they were in an ugly mood and the night before I got to the
camp my guide, a Uinkaret, and a good fellow, warned me to be
constantly on my guard or they would steal all we had. There were three
of us, and probably we were among the first whites to go there. Powell
the autumn after the men were killed went to the Uinkaret Mountains,
but did not continue over to the Shewits Plateau. Thompson went there
in 1872.
[1] I have since been told that these men were killed near Mt.
Dellenbaugh, but my version is as I remember Jacob Hamblin’s statement
to me in 1872. He was the first to get the story.
The Basket Maker. The Basket Maker.
Old woman of the Kaibab Pai Utes. Behind is the typical Pai Ute
dwelling of boughs and brush. The dwellings of the Shewits are similar.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Meanwhile the boat party dashed safely on through a succession of
rapids till noon, when they arrived at another very bad place. In
working through this by means of lines, Bradley was let down in one of
the boats to fend her off the rocks, and finding himself in a serious
predicament started to cut the line, when the stern of the boat pulled
away and he shot down alone. He was a powerful man, and snatching up
the steering oar, with several strong strokes he put her head down
stream and immediately boat and all disappeared amidst the foaming
breakers. But he came out unharmed, and in time to render service to
Powell’s boat, which was badly shaken up in the passage. The other men
of Bradley’s boat, left behind, were obliged to make a long and
difficult climb before they were able to rejoin their craft. By night
they had run entirely out of the granite, and at noon the next day,
without encountering any more serious trouble, they emerged at last
from the depths of the giant chasm. They were at the mouth of the Grand
Wash. The Dragon of Waters was vanquished. Not that the Dragon would
not fight again just as before, but those who attacked him in future
would understand his temper.
Brother Belder’s—Virgen City. Brother Belder’s—Virgen City.
A typical frontier Mormon home.
Photograph by U.S. Geol. Survey.
Below this point Powell was guided by a manuscript journal which Jacob
Hamblin and two other Mormons, Miller and Crosby, had kept on a boat
journey a few years earlier from the Grand Wash to Callville. Ives and
others having been up to Callville, the exploration of the Colorado was
now complete. There was no part of it unknown; and Powell’s feat in
descending through the long series of difficult canyons stands
unrivalled in the annals of exploration on this continent. “The relief
from danger and the joy of success are great,” he writes. “Ever before
us has been an unknown danger, heavier than immediate peril. Every
waking hour passed in the Grand Canyon has been one of toil.” His chief
concern now was the fate of the men who had deserted him, but this was
not revealed till the next year. Had they remained with the others,
they probably would have gone safely through, but had they died, it
would have been properly and gloriously, in the battle with the fierce
river. In the history of expeditions, it is usually those who depart
from the original plan who suffer most, for this plan is generally well
considered beforehand, whereas any subsequent change is mainly based on
error or fear. Running on through a couple of small canyons, they
discovered on the bank some Pai Utes, who ran away, but a little
farther down they came to another camp where several did not run.
Nothing could be learned from them about the whites, yet a short
distance below this they came upon three white men and a native hauling
a seine. They had reached the goal! It was the mouth of the Virgen
River! The men in the boat had heard that the whole party was lost and
were on the lookout for wreckage. They were a father and his sons,
named Asa, Mormons from a town about twenty miles up the Virgen. The
total stock of food left the explorers was ten pounds of flour, fifteen
of dried apples, and about seventy of coffee. Powell and his brother
here said farewell to their companions of the long and perilous
journey. They went to the Mormon settlements, while the others
continued down the river in the boats to Yuma where Hawkins and Bradley
left. Sumner and Hall continued to the Gulf which they reached before
the end of September.
This expedition, by hard labour, with good boats had, accomplished in
about thirty working days the distance from the mouth of Grand River
down, while White claimed to have done it on a clumsy raft in eleven!
And where White professed to find smooth sailing in his imaginary
voyage, Powell had discovered the most dangerous river of all.
Of his companions on this extraordinary journey, Powell says “I was a
maimed man, my right arm was gone; and these brave men, these good men,
never forgot it. In every danger my safety was their first care, and in
every waking hour some kind service was rendered me, and they
transfigured my misfortune into a boon.”