THE HEART OF THE DESERT.
There is an arid region lying in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah
which has been called the District of the Grand Cañon of the Colorado.
The area, roughly estimated, contains from 13,000 to 16,000 square
miles--about the size of the State of Maryland. This region, fully
described by the explorers and studied by the geologists in the United
States service, but little known to even the travelling public, is
probably the most interesting territory of its size on the globe. At
least it is unique. In attempting to convey an idea of it the writer can
be assisted by no comparison, nor can he appeal in the minds of his
readers to any experience of scenery that can apply here. The so-called
Grand Cañon differs not in degree from all other scenes; it differs in
kind.
The Colorado River flows southward through Utah, and crosses the Arizona
line below the junction with the San Juan. It continues southward,
flowing deep in what is called the Marble Cañon, till it is joined by
the Little Colorado, coming up from the south-east; it then turns
westward in a devious line until it drops straight south, and forms the
western boundary of Arizona. The centre of the district mentioned is the
westwardly flowing part of the Colorado. South of the river is the
Colorado Plateau, at a general elevation of about 7000 feet. North of
it the land is higher, and ascends in a series of plateaus, and then
terraces, a succession of cliffs like a great stair-way, rising to the
high plateaus of Utah. The plateaus, adjoining the river on the north
and well marked by north and south dividing lines, or faults, are,
naming them from east to west, the Paria, the Kaibab, the Kanab, the
Uinkaret, and the Sheavwitz, terminating in a great wall on the west,
the Great Wash fault, where the surface of the country drops at once
from a general elevation of 6000 feet to from 1300 to 3000 feet above
the sea-level--into a desolate and formidable desert.
If the Grand Cañon itself did not dwarf everything else, the scenery of
these plateaus would be superlative in interest. It is not all desert,
nor are the gorges, cañons, cliffs, and terraces, which gradually
prepare the mind for the comprehension of the Grand Cañon, the only
wonders of this land of enchantment. These are contrasted with the
sylvan scenery of the Kaibab Plateau, its giant forests and parks, and
broad meadows decked in the summer with wild flowers in dense masses of
scarlet, white, purple, and yellow. The Vermilion Cliffs, the Pink
Cliffs, the White Cliffs, surpass in fantastic form and brilliant color
anything that the imagination conceives possible in nature, and there
are dreamy landscapes quite beyond the most exquisite fancies of Claude
and of Turner. The region is full of wonders, of beauties, and
sublimities that Shelley's imaginings do not match in the "Prometheus
Unbound," and when it becomes accessible to the tourist it will offer an
endless field for the delight of those whose minds can rise to the
heights of the sublime and the beautiful. In all imaginative writing or
painting the material used is that of human experience, otherwise it
could not be understood; even heaven must be described in the terms of
an earthly paradise. Human experience has no prototype of this region,
and the imagination has never conceived of its forms and colors. It is
impossible to convey an adequate idea of it by pen or pencil or brush.
The reader who is familiar with the glowing descriptions in the official
reports of Major J. W. Powell, Captain C. E. Dutton, Lieutenant Ives,
and others, will not save himself from a shock of surprise when the
reality is before him. This paper deals only with a single view in this
marvellous region.
[Illustration: GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO--VIEW OPPOSITE POINT
SUBLIME.]
The point where we struck the Grand Cañon, approaching it from the
south, is opposite the promontory in the Kaibab Plateau named Point
Sublime by Major Powell, just north of the 36th parallel, and 112° 15'
west longitude. This is only a few miles west of the junction with the
Little Colorado. About three or four miles west of this junction the
river enters the east slope of the east Kaibab monocline, and here the
Grand Cañon begins. Rapidly the chasm deepens to about 6000 feet, or
rather it penetrates a higher country, the slope of the river remaining
about the same. Through this lofty plateau--an elevation of 7000 to 9000
feet--the chasm extends for sixty miles, gradually changing its course
to the north-west, and entering the Kanab Plateau. The Kaibab division
of the Grand Cañon is by far the sublimest of all, being 1000 feet
deeper than any other. It is not grander only on account of its greater
depth, but it is broader and more diversified with magnificent
architectural features.
The Kanab division, only less magnificent than the Kaibab, receives the
Kanab Cañon from the north and the Cataract Cañon from the south, and
ends at the Toroweap Valley.
The section of the Grand Cañon seen by those who take the route from
Peach Springs is between 113° and 114° west longitude, and, though
wonderful, presents few of the great features of either the Kaibab or
the Kanab divisions. The Grand Cañon ends, west longitude 114°, at the
Great Wash, west of the Hurricane Ledge or Fault. Its whole length from
Little Colorado to the Great Wash, measured by the meanderings of the
surface of the river, is 220 miles; by a median line between the crests
of the summits of the walls with two-mile cords, about 195 miles; the
distance in a straight line is 125 miles.
In our journey to the Grand Cañon we left the Santa Fé line at
Flagstaff, a new town with a lively lumber industry, in the midst of a
spruce-pine forest which occupies the broken country through which the
road passes for over fifty miles. The forest is open, the trees of
moderate size are too thickly set with low-growing limbs to make clean
lumber, and the foliage furnishes the minimum of shade; but the change
to these woods is a welcome one from the treeless reaches of the desert
on either side. The cañon is also reached from Williams, the next
station west, the distance being a little shorter, and the point on the
cañon visited being usually a little farther west. But the Flagstaff
route is for many reasons usually preferred. Flagstaff lies just
south-east of the San Francisco Mountain, and on the great Colorado
Plateau, which has a pretty uniform elevation of about 7000 feet above
the sea. The whole region is full of interest. Some of the most
remarkable cliff dwellings are within ten miles of Flagstaff, on the
Walnut Creek Cañon. At Holbrook, 100 miles east, the traveller finds a
road some forty miles long, that leads to the great petrified forest, or
Chalcedony Park. Still farther east are the villages of the Pueblo
Indians, near the line, while to the northward is the great reservation
of the Navajos, a nomadic tribe celebrated for its fine blankets and
pretty work in silver--a tribe that preserves much of its manly
independence by shunning the charity of the United States. No Indians
have come into intimate or dependent relations with the whites without
being deteriorated.
[Illustration: TOURISTS IN THE COLORADO CAÑON.]
Flagstaff is the best present point of departure, because it has a small
hotel, good supply stores, and a large livery-stable, made necessary by
the business of the place and the objects of interest in the
neighborhood, and because one reaches from there by the easiest road the
finest scenery incomparably on the Colorado. The distance is seventy-six
miles through a practically uninhabited country, much of it a desert,
and with water very infrequent. No work has been done on the road; it is
made simply by driving over it. There are a few miles here and there of
fair wheeling, but a good deal of it is intolerably dusty or exceedingly
stony, and progress is slow. In the daytime (it was the last of June)
the heat is apt to be excessive; but this could be borne, the air is so
absolutely dry and delicious, and breezes occasionally spring up, if it
were not for the dust. It is, notwithstanding the novelty of the
adventure and of the scenery by the way, a tiresome journey of two days.
A day of rest is absolutely required at the cañon, so that five days
must be allowed for the trip. This will cost the traveller, according to
the size of the party made up, from forty to fifty dollars. But a much
longer sojourn at the cañon is desirable.
Our party of seven was stowed in and on an old Concord coach drawn by
six horses, and piled with camp equipage, bedding, and provisions. A
four-horse team followed, loaded with other supplies and cooking
utensils. The road lies on the east side of the San Francisco Mountain.
Returning, we passed around its west side, gaining thus a complete view
of this shapely peak. The compact range is a group of extinct volcanoes,
the craters of which are distinctly visible. The cup-like summit of the
highest is 13,000 feet above the sea, and snow always lies on the north
escarpment. Rising about 6000 feet above the point of view of the great
plateau, it is from all sides a noble object, the dark rock,
snow-sprinkled, rising out of the dense growth of pine and cedar. We
drove at first through open pine forests, through park-like intervals,
over the foot-hills of the mountain, through growths of scrub cedar, and
out into the ever-varying rolling country to widely-extended prospects.
Two considerable hills on our right attracted us by their unique beauty.
Upon the summit and side of each was a red glow exactly like the tint of
sunset. We thought surely that it was the effect of reflected light, but
the sky was cloudless and the color remained constant. The color came
from the soil. The first was called Sunset Mountain. One of our party
named the other, and the more beautiful, Peachblow Mountain, a poetic
and perfectly descriptive name.
We lunched at noon beside a swift, clouded, cold stream of snow-water
from the San Francisco, along which grew a few gnarled cedars and some
brilliant wild flowers. The scene was more than picturesque; in the
clear hot air of the desert the distant landscape made a hundred
pictures of beauty. Behind us the dark form of San Francisco rose up
6000 feet to its black crater and fields of spotless snow. Away off to
the north-east, beyond the brown and gray pastures, across a far line
distinct in dull color, lay the Painted Desert, like a mirage, like a
really painted landscape, glowing in red and orange and pink, an immense
city rather than a landscape, with towers and terraces and façades,
melting into indistinctness as in a rosy mist, spectral but constant,
weltering in a tropic glow and heat, walls and columns and shafts, the
wreck of an Oriental capital on a wide violet plain, suffused with
brilliant color softened into exquisite shades. All over this region
nature has such surprises, that laugh at our inadequate conception of
her resources.
Our camp for the night was at the next place where water could be
obtained, a station of the Arizona Cattle Company. Abundant water is
piped down to it from mountain springs. The log-house and stable of the
cow-boys were unoccupied, and we pitched our tent on a knoll by the
corral. The night was absolutely dry, and sparkling with the starlight.
A part of the company spread their blankets on the ground under the sky.
It is apt to be cold in this region towards morning, but lodging in the
open air is no hardship in this delicious climate. The next day the way
part of the distance, with only a road marked by wagon wheels, was
through extensive and barren-looking cattle ranges, through pretty vales
of grass surrounded by stunted cedars, and over stormy ridges and plains
of sand and small bowlders. The water having failed at Red Horse, the
only place where it is usually found in the day's march, our horses went
without, and we had resource to our canteens. The whole country is
essentially arid, but snow falls in the winter-time, and its melting,
with occasional showers in the summer, create what are called surface
wells, made by drainage. Many of them go dry by June. There had been no
rain in the region since the last of March, but clouds were gathering
daily, and showers are always expected in July. The phenomenon of rain
on this baked surface, in this hot air, and with this immense horizon,
is very interesting. Showers in this tentative time are local. In our
journey we saw showers far off, we experienced a dash for ten minutes,
but it was local, covering not more than a mile or two square. We have
in sight a vast canopy of blue sky, of forming and dispersing clouds. It
is difficult for them to drop their moisture in the rising columns of
hot air. The result at times was a very curious spectacle--rain in the
sky that did not reach the earth. Perhaps some cold current high above
us would condense the moisture, which would begin to fall in long
trailing sweeps, blown like fine folds of muslin, or like sheets of
dissolving sugar, and then the hot air of the earth would dissipate it,
and the showers would be absorbed in the upper regions. The heat was
sometimes intense, but at intervals a refreshing wind would blow, the
air being as fickle as the rain; and now and then we would see a slender
column of dust, a thousand or two feet high, marching across the desert,
apparently not more than two feet in diameter, and wavering like the
threads of moisture that tried in vain to reach the earth as rain. Of
life there was not much to be seen in our desert route. In the first day
we encountered no habitation except the ranch-house mentioned, and saw
no human being; and the second day none except the solitary occupant of
the dried well at Red Horse, and two or three Indians on the hunt. A few
squirrels were seen, and a rabbit now and then, and occasionally a bird.
The general impression was that of a deserted land. But antelope abound
in the timber regions, and we saw several of these graceful creatures
quite near us. Excellent antelope steaks, bought of the wandering Indian
hunters, added something to our "canned" supplies. One day as we
lunched, without water, on the cedar slope of a lovely grass interval,
we saw coming towards us over the swells of the prairie a figure of a
man on a horse. It rode to us straight as the crow flies. The Indian
pony stopped not two feet from where our group sat, and the rider, who
was an Oualapai chief, clad in sacking, with the print of the brand of
flour or salt on his back, dismounted with his Winchester rifle, and
stood silently looking at us without a word of salutation. He stood
there, impassive, until we offered him something to eat. Having eaten
all we gave him, he opened his mouth and said, "Smoke 'em?" Having
procured from the other wagon a pipe of tobacco and a pull at the
driver's canteen, he returned to us all smiles. His only baggage was the
skull of an antelope, with the horns, hung at his saddle. Into this he
put the bread and meat which we gave him, mounted the wretched pony, and
without a word rode straight away. At a little distance he halted,
dismounted, and motioned towards the edge of the timber, where he had
spied an antelope. But the game eluded him, and he mounted again and
rode off across the desert--a strange figure. His tribe lives in the
cañon some fifty miles west, and was at present encamped, for the
purpose of hunting, in the pine woods not far from the point we were
aiming at.