Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
The whole number part of a mixed fraction is separated from the
fractional part with -, for example, 2-1/2.
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON
* * * * *
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* * * * *
OUTING ADVENTURE LIBRARY
FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON
BY MAJOR JOHN WESLEY POWELL
Being the Record of the Pioneer Exploration
of the Colorado River in 1869-70
EDITED BY
HORACE KEPHART
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
MCMXV
* * * * *
Copyright, 1915, by
OUTING PUBLISHING COMPANY
_All rights reserved._
INTRODUCTION
The Colorado River of the West is formed in southeastern Utah by the
junction of the Grand and Green rivers. For hundreds of miles it flows
through a series of profound chasms, in many places from 4,000 to 6,000
feet deep, and rising nearly vertically for a considerable distance
above the water. These cañons are from one to fifteen miles wide at
the top. The most famous of them is the Marble-Grand cañon (really
continuous, although it goes under two names, the Marble and the
Grand). Through this vast gorge the Colorado drops 2,330 feet in 283
miles, the current sometimes attaining a velocity of twenty-five miles
an hour. The river itself varies in width from seventy-five feet to a
quarter of a mile. In the narrowest places it has at times a depth of
over 100 feet.
Up to 1869 practically nothing was known of the Colorado River from its
source to where it emerges into the valley of the Grand Wash, except
what could be observed from look-out points at the tops of the cañons,
or from the few places where descents had been made to the bottom. It
was a river of mystery and of fear. For long distances it was supposed
to flow underground. There was no evidence that any human being had
ever passed through the cañons and come out alive. The Indians who
lived in the neighborhood considered such a feat preposterous.
Then came a scientist and a man of nerve, Major John Wesley Powell,
who studied the river carefully at several points along its bank,
and calmly decided to risk his life in clearing up the mystery by
navigating the stream clear through to the Wash.
The undertaking was all the more remarkable from the fact that Powell
had only one arm. He had lost his right arm in the battle of Shiloh.
His plucky young wife, to whom he had been married but a month, was
present at headquarters when he was wounded, and promptly offered
herself as a substitute for the missing limb so that her husband could
continue in service. She then and there enlisted, and General Grant
gave her a “perpetual pass” to follow the army in the capacity she had
chosen. With this help Major Powell continued in active service to the
close of the war.
In his student days Powell had made a specialty of what was then called
“natural history.” When the war was over he accepted a professorship of
geology in the Illinois Wesleyan University, and later held a similar
chair in the Illinois Normal University. In the summer of 1867 he
initiated the practice of student field work by taking his class to
the mountains of Colorado for geological exploration. It was on this
trip that he formed the idea of exploring the cañons of the Colorado
River of the West. Having obtained funds from public institutions of
Illinois to outfit his little expedition, he started from Green River
City, above the head of the Colorado proper, May 24, 1869, on one of
the most hazardous adventures in the history of exploration. He emerged
from the Grand Cañon on August 29, with five of the nine men he had
started with. Four had deserted on the way, and three of these were
killed by Indians.
Major Powell’s report on this first exploration of the Colorado River
was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1875. Together with
the scientific data appended, it forms a large quarto volume, which
is now out of print. The narrative part is here republished without
abridgement.
In 1870, Congress established a Topographical and Geological Survey of
the Colorado River of the West, and Powell was placed in charge of it.
In 1871-1872 he made a second descent of the river, this time for the
government. Again he came through unharmed, proving his mastery of a
species of navigation so difficult that many who have tried it in later
years have perished in those brawling waters.
Much of Powell’s attention was given to American ethnology, and when a
Bureau of Ethnology was formed by the government, he was appointed its
director. In 1881 he succeeded Clarence King as director of the U. S.
Geological Survey. Major Powell died September 23, 1902.
HORACE KEPHART.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE VALLEY OF THE COLORADO 15
II FROM GREEN RIVER CITY TO FLAMING GORGE 27
III FROM FLAMING GORGE TO THE GATE OF LODORE 39
IV THE CANYON OF LODORE 60
V FROM ECHO PARK TO THE MOUTH OF THE UINTA RIVER 83
VI FROM THE MOUTH OF THE UINTA RIVER TO JUNCTION
OF THE GRAND AND GREEN 113
VII FROM THE JUNCTION OF THE GRAND AND GREEN TO
THE MOUTH OF THE LITTLE COLORADO 142
VIII THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO 198
IX THE RIO VIRGEN AND THE U-IN-KA-RET MOUNTAINS 258
* * * * *
FIRST THROUGH THE GRAND CANYON
CHAPTER I THE VALLEY OF THE COLORADO
The Colorado River is formed by the junction of the Grand and Green.
The Grand River has its source in the Rocky Mountains, five or six
miles west of Long’s Peak, in latitude 40° 17′ and longitude 105° 43′
approximately. A group of little alpine lakes, that receive their
waters directly from perpetual snow-banks, discharge into a common
reservoir, known as Grand Lake, a beautiful sheet of water. Its quiet
surface reflects towering cliffs and crags of granite on its eastern
shore; and stately pines and firs stand on its western margin.
The Green River heads near Frémont’s Peak, in the Wind River Mountains,
in latitude 43° 15′ and longitude 109° 45′, approximately. This river,
like the last, has its sources in alpine lakes, fed by everlasting
snows. Thousands of these little lakes, with deep, cold, emerald
waters, are embosomed among the crags of the Rocky Mountains. These
streams, born in the cold, gloomy solitudes of the upper mountain
region, have a strange, eventful history as they pass down through
gorges, tumbling in cascades and cataracts, until they reach the hot,
arid plains of the Lower Colorado, where the waters that were so clear
above empty as turbid floods into the Gulf of California.
The mouth of the Colorado is in latitude 31° 53′ and longitude 115°.
The Green River is larger than the Grand, and is the upper continuation
of the Colorado. Including this river, the whole length of the stream
is about two thousand miles. The region of country drained by the
Colorado and its tributaries is about eight hundred miles in length,
and varies from three hundred to five hundred in width, containing
about three hundred thousand square miles, an area larger than all the
New England and Middle States, and Maryland and Virginia added, or as
large as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri.
There are two distinct portions of the basin of the Colorado. The lower
third is but little above the level of the sea, though here and there
ranges of mountains rise to an altitude of from two to six thousand
feet. This part of the valley is bounded on the north by a line of
cliffs, that present a bold, often vertical step, hundreds or thousands
of feet to the table-lands above.
The upper two-thirds of the basin rises from four to eight thousand
feet above the level of the sea. This high region, on the east, north,
and west, is set with ranges of snow-clad mountains, attaining an
altitude above the sea varying from eight to fourteen thousand feet.
All winter long, on its mountain-crested rim, snow falls, filling the
gorges, half burying the forests, and covering the crags and peaks
with a mantle woven by the winds from the waves of the sea--a mantle
of snow. When the summer-sun comes, this snow melts, and tumbles down
the mountain-sides in millions of cascades. Ten million cascade brooks
unite to form ten thousand torrent creeks; ten thousand torrent creeks
unite to form a hundred rivers beset with cataracts; a hundred roaring
rivers unite to form the Colorado, which rolls, a mad, turbid stream,
into the Gulf of California.
Consider the action of one of these streams: its source in the
mountains, where the snows fall; its course through the arid plains.
Now, if at the river’s flood storms were falling on the plains, its
channel would be cut but little faster than the adjacent country would
be washed, and the general level would thus be preserved; but, under
the conditions here mentioned, the river deepens its bed, as there is
much through corrosion and but little lateral degradation.
So all the streams cut deeper and still deeper until their banks are
towering cliffs of solid rock. These deep, narrow gorges are called
cañons.
For more than a thousand miles along its course, the Colorado has cut
for itself such a cañon; but at some few points, where lateral streams
join it, the cañon is broken, and narrow, transverse valleys divide it
properly into a series of cañons.
The Virgen, Kanab, Paria, Escalante, Dirty Devil, San Rafael, Price,
and Uinta on the west, the Grand, Yampa, San Juan, and Colorado
Chiquito on the east, have also cut for themselves such narrow, winding
gorges, or deep cañons. Every river entering these has cut another
cañon; every lateral creek has cut a cañon; every brook runs in a
cañon; every rill born of a shower, and born again of a shower, and
living only during these showers, has cut for itself a cañon; so that
the whole upper portion of the basin of the Colorado is traversed by a
labyrinth of these deep gorges.
Owing to a great variety of geological conditions, these cañons differ
much in general aspect. The Rio Virgen, between Long Valley and the
Mormon town of Schunesburgh, runs through Pa-ru′-nu-weap Cañon, often
not more than twenty or thirty feet in width, and from six hundred to
one thousand five hundred feet deep.
Away to the north, the Yampa empties into the Green by a cañon that I
essayed to cross in the fall of 1868, and was baffled from day to day
until the fourth had nearly passed before I could find my way down
to the river. But thirty miles above its mouth, this cañon ends, and
a narrow valley, with a flood-plain, is found. Still farther up the
stream, the river comes down through another cañon, and beyond that a
narrow valley is found, and its upper course is now through a cañon and
now a valley.
All these cañons are alike changeable in their topographic
characteristics.
The longest cañon through which the Colorado runs is that between the
mouth of the Colorado Chiquito and the Grand Wash, a distance of two
hundred and seventeen and a half miles. But this is separated from
another above, sixty-five and a half miles in length, only by the
narrow cañon-valley of the Colorado Chiquito.
All the scenic features of this cañon land are on a giant scale,
strange and weird. The streams run at depths almost inaccessible;
lashing the rocks which beset their channels; rolling in rapids, and
plunging in falls, and making a wild music which but adds to the gloom
of the solitude.
The little valleys nestling along the streams are diversified by
bordering willows, clumps of box-elder, and small groves of cottonwood.
Low _mesas_, dry and treeless, stretch back from the brink of the
cañon, often showing smooth surfaces of naked, solid rock. In some
places, the country rock being composed of marls, the surface is a
bed of loose, disintegrated material, and you walk through it as in
a bed of ashes. Often these marls are richly colored and variegated.
In other places, the country rock is a loose sandstone, the
disintegration of which has left broad stretches of drifting sand,
white, golden, and vermilion.
Where this sandstone is a conglomerate, a paving of pebbles has been
left, a mosaic of many colors, polished by the drifting sands, and
glistening in the sunlight.
After the cañons, the most remarkable features of the country are
the long lines of cliffs. These are bold escarpments, often hundreds
or thousands of feet in altitude, great geographic steps, scores or
hundreds of miles in length, presenting steep faces of rock, often
quite vertical.
Having climbed one of these steps, you may descend by a gentle,
sometimes imperceptible, slope to the foot of another. They will thus
present a series of terraces, the steps of which are well-defined
escarpments of rock. The lateral extension of such a line of cliffs
is usually very irregular; sharp salients are projected on the plains
below, and deep recesses are cut into the terraces above.
Intermittent streams coming down the cliffs have cut many cañons or
cañon valleys, by which the traveler may pass from the plain below to
the terrace above. By these gigantic stairways, you may ascend to high
plateaus, covered with forests of pine and fir.
The region is further diversified by short ranges of eruptive
mountains. A vast system of fissures--huge cracks in the rocks to the
depths below--extends across the country. From these crevices, floods
of lava have poured, covering _mesas_ and table-lands with sheets of
black basalt. The expiring energies of these volcanic agencies have
piled up huge cinder-cones, that stand along the fissures, red, brown,
and black, naked of vegetation, and conspicuous landmarks, set, as they
are, in contrast to the bright, variegated rocks of sedimentary origin.
These cañon gorges, obstructing cliffs and desert wastes, have
prevented the traveler from penetrating the country, so that, until
the Colorado River Exploring Expedition was organized, it was almost
unknown. Yet enough had been seen to foment rumor, and many wonderful
stories have been told in the hunter’s cabin and prospector’s camp.
Stories were related of parties entering the gorge in boats, and being
carried down with fearful velocity into whirlpools, where all were
overwhelmed in the abyss of waters; others, of underground passages for
the great river, into which boats had passed never to be seen again.
It was currently believed that the river was lost under the rocks for
several hundred miles. There were other accounts of great falls, whose
roaring music could be heard on the distant mountain-summits. There
were many stories current of parties wandering on the brink of the
cañon, vainly endeavoring to reach the waters below, and perishing with
thirst at last in sight of the river which was roaring its mockery into
dying ears.
The Indians, too, have woven the mysteries of the cañons into the
myths of their religion. Long ago, there was a great and wise chief,
who mourned the death of his wife, and would not be comforted until
Ta-vwoats, one of the Indian gods, came to him, and told him she was
in a happier land, and offered to take him there, that he might see
for himself, if, upon his return, he would cease to mourn. The great
chief promised. Then Ta-vwoats made a trail through the mountains that
intervene between that beautiful land and this, the desert home of the
poor Nu′-ma.
This trail was the cañon gorge of the Colorado. Through it he led him;
and, when they had returned, the deity exacted from the chief a promise
that he would tell no one of the joys of that land, lest, through
discontent with the circumstances of this world, they should desire
to go to heaven. Then he rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging
stream, that should engulf any that might attempt to enter thereby.
More than once have I been warned by the Indians not to enter this
cañon. They considered it disobedience to the gods and contempt for
their authority, and believed that it would surely bring upon me their
wrath.
For two years previous to the exploration, I had been making some
geological studies among the heads of the cañons leading to the
Colorado, and a desire to explore the Grand Cañon itself grew upon
me. Early in the spring of 1869, a small party was organized for this
purpose. Boats were built in Chicago, and transported by rail to the
point where the Union Pacific Railroad crosses the Green River. With
these we were to descend the Green into the Colorado, and the Colorado
down to the foot of the Grand Cañon.