WONDERS OF EROSION
_Thursday, October the 19th_. We embarked again with two of our
new-found friends on board as passengers for a short ride, their
intention being to hunt as they walked back. They left us at a ranch
beside the San Rafæl River, a small stream entering from the west.
They left some mail with us to be delivered to Mr. Wolverton, whose
son we had met above. About 20 miles below Green River we reached his
home. Judging by a number of boats--both motor and row boats--tied
to his landing, Mr. Wolverton was an enthusiastic river-man. After
glancing over his mail, he asked how we had come and was interested
when he learned that we were making a boating trip. He was decidedly
interested when he saw the boats and learned that we were going to
our home in the Grand Canyon. His first impression was that we were
merely making a little pleasure trip on the quiet water.
Going carefully over the boats, he remarked that they met with his
approval with one exception. They seemed to be a little bit short
for the heavy rapids of the Colorado, he thought. He agreed that our
experience in the upper rapids had been good training, but said there
was no comparison in the rapids. We would have a river ten times as
great as in Lodore to contend with; and in numerous places, for short
distances, the descent was as abrupt as anything we had seen on the
Green. Wolverton was personally acquainted with a number of the men
who had made the river trip, and, with the one exception of Major
Powell’s expeditions, had met all the parties who had successfully
navigated its waters. This not only included Galloway’s and Stone’s
respective expeditions, which had made the entire trip, but included
two other expeditions which began at Green River, Utah, and had gone
through the canyons of the Colorado.[4] These were the Brown-Stanton
expedition, which made a railroad survey through the canyons of
the Colorado; and another commonly known as the Russell-Monnette
expedition, two of the party making the complete trip, arriving at
Needles after a voyage filled with adventure and many narrow escapes.
Mr. Wolverton remarked that every one knew of those who had navigated
the entire series of canyons, but that few people knew of those who
had been unsuccessful. He knew of seven parties that had failed to
get through Cataract Canyon’s forty-one miles of rapids, with their
boats, most of them never being heard of again.
These unsuccessful parties were often miners or prospectors who
wished to get into the comparatively flat country which began about
fifty miles below the Junction of the Green and the Grand rivers.
Here lay Glen Canyon, with 150 miles of quiet water. Nothing need
be feared in this, or in the 120 miles of good boating from Green
River, Utah, to the junction. Between these two points, however, lay
Cataract Canyon, beginning at the junction of the two rivers. Judging
by its unsavory record, Cataract Canyon was something to be feared.
Among these parties who had made short trips on the river was one
composed of two men. Phil Foote was a gambler, stage robber, and
bad man in general. He had broken out of jail in Salt Lake City
and, accompanied by another of similar character, stole a boat at
Green River, Utah, and proceeded down the river. Soon after entering
Cataract Canyon, they lost their boat and provisions. Finding a tent
which had been washed down the river, they tore it into strips and
constructed a raft out driftwood, tying the logs together with the
strips of canvas. Days of hardship followed, and starvation stared
them in the face; until finally Foote’s partner gave up, said he
would drown himself. With an oath Foote drew his revolver, saying
he had enough of such cowardice and would save him the trouble. His
companion then begged for his life, saying he would stick to the
end, and they finally got through to the Hite ranch, which lay a
short distance below. They were taken care of here, and terminated
their voyage a short distance beyond, going out over land. Foote was
afterwards shot and killed while holding up a stage in Nevada.
The Hite ranch also proved to be a place of refuge for others, the
sole survivors of two other parties who were wrecked, one person
escaping on each occasion. Hite’s ranch, and Lee’s Ferry, 140 miles
below Hite, had mail service. We had left instructions at the
post-office to forward our mail to one or the other of these points.
These were also the only places on our 425-mile run to Bright Angel
Trail where we could expect to see any people, so we were informed.
We were about to descend into what is, possibly, the least inhabited
portion of the United States of America.
[Illustration: THE CENTER OF THREE SYMMETRICAL FORMATIONS IN THE
DOUBLE BOW KNOT.]
A party of civil engineers working here, joined us that evening at
Wolverton’s home. A young man in the party asked us if we would
consent to carry a letter through with us and mail it at our
destination. He thought it would be an interesting souvenir for the
person to whom it was addressed. We agreed to do our best, but would
not guarantee delivery. The next morning two letters were given us to
mail, and were accepted with this one reservation. Before leaving
Mr. Wolverton showed us his motor boat with much pardonable pride. On
this boat he sometimes took small parties down to the beginning of
the Colorado River, and up the Grand, a round trip of three hundred
miles or more. The boat had never been taken down the Colorado for
the simple reason that the rapids began almost immediately below the
junction.
Wolverton, while he had never been through the rapids in a boat,
had followed the river on foot for several miles and was thoroughly
familiar with their nature. On parting he remarked,
“Well, boys, you are going to tackle a mighty hard proposition, but
I’m sure you can make it if you are only careful. But look out and go
easy.”
Wolverton was no novice, speaking from much experience in bad water,
and we were greatly impressed by what he had to say.
Five uneventful days were spent in Labyrinth and Stillwater canyons,
through which the Green peacefully completed its rather violent
descent. In the upper end we usually found rough water in the
canyons and quiet water in the open sections. Here at least were two
canyons, varying from 300 feet at their beginning to 1300 in depth,
both without a rapid. The first of these was Labyrinth Canyon, so
named from its elaborately winding course as well as its wonderful
intricate system of dry, lateral canyons, and its reproduction in
rock of architectural forms, castles, arches, and grottos; even
animals and people were represented in every varying form.
Our Sunday camp was beside what might be called a serpentine curve or
series of loops in the river. This was at the centre of what is known
as the Double Bow Knot, three rounded loops, very symmetrical in
form, with an almost circular formation of flat-topped rock, a mile
or more in diameter in the centre of each loop. A narrow neck of rock
connects these formations to the main mesa, all being on the same
level, about 700 feet above the river. The upper half of the rock
walls was sheer; below was a steep boulder-covered slope. The centre
formation is the largest and most perfect, being nearly two miles in
diameter and almost round; so much so, that a very few minutes are
necessary to climb over the narrow neck which connects this formation
to the mesa. It took 45 minutes of hard rowing on a good current to
take us around this one loop. The neck is being rapidly eroded, two
hundred feet having disappeared from the top, and at some distant day
will doubtless disappear entirely, making a short cut for the river,
and will leave a rounded island of rock standing seven hundred feet
above the river. A bird’s-eye view of the three loops would compare
well in shape to the little mechanical contrivance known as the “eye”
in the combination of “hook and eye.” All women and many men will get
a clear idea the shape of the Double Bow Knot from this comparison.
We recorded an interesting experiment with the thermometer at this
camp, showing a great variety of temperatures, unbelievable almost
to one who knows nothing of conditions in these semi-arid plateaus.
A little ice had formed the night before. Under a clear sky the
next day at noon, our thermometer recorded 54 degrees in the shade,
but ran up to 102 degrees in the sun. At the same time the water
in the river was 52 degrees Far. The effect of being deluged in
ice-cold waves, then running into deep sunless canyons with a cold
wind sweeping down from the snow on top, can be easier imagined than
described. This is what we could expect to meet later.
The colouring of the rocks varied greatly in many localities, a light
red predominating. In some places the red rock was capped by a gray,
flint-like limestone; in others this had disappeared, but underneath
the red were regular strata of various-coloured rocks, pink, brown,
light yellow, even blue and green being found in two or three
sections.
The forms of erosion were as varied as the rock itself, each
different-coloured rock stratum presenting a different surface.
In one place the surface was broken into rounded forms like the
backs of a herd of elephants. In others we saw reproductions of
images, carved by the drifting sands--a Diana, with uplifted arm,
as large as the Goddess of Liberty; a Billiken on a throne with a
hundred worshippers bowed around. Covered with nature-made ruins and
magnificent rock structures, as this section is, it is not entirely
without utility. It is a grazing country. Great numbers of contented
cattle, white-faced, with red and white, or black and white patches
of colour on their well-filled hides, were found in the open spaces
between the sheer-walled cliffs. Dusty, well-beaten trails led down
through these wide canyons, trails which undoubtedly gained the top
of the level, rocky plateau a few miles back from the river. As
is usual in a cattle country at the end of the summer season, the
bunch-grass, close to the water supply--which in this case happened
to the river--was nibbled close to the roots. The cattle only came
here to drink, then travelled many miles, no doubt, to the better
grazing on the upper plateaus. The sage, always gray, was grayer
still, with dust raised by many passing herds. There was a band
of range horses too, those splendid wild-eyed animals with kingly
bearing, and wind-blown tails and manes, lean like a race-horse,
strong-muscled and tough-sinewed, pawing and neighing, half defiant
and half afraid of the sight of men, the only thing alive to which
they pay tribute.
[Illustration: _Copyright by Kolb Bros._
THE BUTTES OF THE CROSS.]
It is a never ending source of wonder, to those unacquainted with the
semi-arid country, how these animals can exist in a land which, to
them, seems utterly destitute and barren. To many such, a meadow
carpeted with blue grass or timothy is the only pasture on which
grazing horses or grazing cattle can exist; the dried-out looking
tufts of bunch-grass, scattered here and there or sheltered at the
roots of the sage, mean nothing; the grama-grass hidden in the
grease-wood is unnoticed or mistaken for a weed.
But if the land was bare of verdure, the rock saved it from being
monotonous. Varied in colour, the red rock predominated--blood-red
at mid-day, orange-tinted at sunset, with gauze-like purple shadows,
and with the delicate blue outlines always found in the Western
distances; such a land could never be called uninteresting.
The banks of the stream, here in the open, were always green. From
an elevation they appeared like two emerald bands through a land of
red, bordering a stream the tint of the aged pottery found along its
shores. We were continually finding new trees and strange shrubs.
Beside the cottonwoods and the willows there was an occasional
wild-cherry tree; in the shrubs were the service-berry, and the
squaw-berry, with sticky, acid-tasting fruit. The cacti were small,
and excepting the prickly pear were confined nearly altogether to a
small “pin-cushion” cactus, growing a little larger as we travelled
south. And always in the mornings when out of the deep canyons
the moist, pungent odour of the sage greeted our nostrils. It is
inseparable from the West. There is no stuffy germ-laden air there,
out in the sage; one is glad to live, simply to breathe it in and
exhale and breathe again.
In Stillwater Canyon the walls ran up to 1300 feet in height, a
narrow canyon, with precipitous sides. Occasionally we could see
great columns of rock standing on top of the mesa. Late one evening
we saw some small cliff dwellings several hundred feet above the
river, and a few crude ladders leaning against the cliff below the
dwellings. A suitable camp could not be made here, or we would have
stopped to examine them. The shores were slippery with mud and
quicksands, and there was no fire-wood in sight. From here to the
end of the canyons we would have to depend almost entirely on the
drift-piles for fire-wood.
A landing was finally made where a section of a cliff had toppled
from above, affording a solid footing leading up to the higher bank.
We judged from our maps that we were within a very few miles of
the Colorado River. Here some footprints and signs of an old boat
landing, apparently about a week old, were seen in the sand. This
surprised us somewhat, as we had heard of no one coming down ahead of
us.