June 8.--We enter the cañon, and, until noon, find a succession of
rapids, over which our boats have to be taken.
Here I must explain our method of proceeding at such places. The
_Emma Dean_ goes in advance; the other boats follow, in obedience to
signals. When we approach a rapid, or what, on other rivers, would
often be called a fall, I stand on deck to examine it, while the
oarsmen back water, and we drift on as slowly as possible. If I can
see a clear chute between the rocks, away we go; but if the channel
is beset entirely across, we signal the other boats, pull to land,
and I walk along the shore for closer examination. If this reveals no
clear channel, hard work begins. We drop the boats to the very head
of the dangerous place, and let them over by lines, or make a portage,
frequently carrying both boats and cargoes over the rocks, or, perhaps,
only the cargoes, if it is safe to let the boats down.
The waves caused by such falls in a river differ much from the waves of
the sea. The water of an ocean wave merely rises and falls; the form
only passes on, and form chases form unceasingly. A body floating on
such waves merely rises and sinks--does not progress unless impelled
by wind or some other power. But here, the water of the wave passes
on, while the form remains. The waters plunge down ten or twenty feet,
to the foot of a fall; spring up again in a great wave; then down and
up, in a series of billows, that gradually disappear in the more quiet
waters below; but these waves are always there, and you can stand above
and count them.
A boat riding such, leaps and plunges along with great velocity. Now,
the difficulty in riding over these falls, when the rocks are out of
the way, is in the first wave at the foot. This will sometimes gather
for a moment, heaping up higher and higher, until it breaks back. If
the boat strikes it the instant after it breaks, she cuts through,
and the mad breaker dashes its spray over the boat, and would wash us
overboard did we not cling tight. If the boat, in going over the falls,
chances to get caught in some side current, and is turned from its
course, so as to strike the wave “broadside on,” and the wave breaks at
the same instant, the boat is capsized. Still, we must cling to her,
for, the water tight compartments acting as buoys, she cannot sink; and
so we go, dragged through the waves, until still waters are reached. We
then right the boat, and climb aboard. We have several such experiences
to-day.
At night, we camp on the right bank, on a little shelving rock, between
the river and the foot of the cliff; and with night comes gloom into
these great depths.
After supper, we sit by our camp fire, made of drift wood caught by the
rocks, and tell stories of wild life; for the men have seen such in the
mountains, or on the plains, and on the battle fields of the South. It
is late before we spread our blankets on the beach.
Lying down, we look up through the cañon, and see that only a little of
the blue heaven appears overhead--a crescent of blue sky, with two or
three constellations peering down upon us.
I do not sleep for some time, as the excitement of the day has not worn
off. Soon I see a bright star, that appears to rest on the very verge
of the cliff overhead to the east. Slowly it seems to float from its
resting place on the rock over the cañon. At first, it appears like
a jewel set on the brink of the cliff; but, as it moves out from the
rock, I almost wonder that it does not fall. In fact, it does seem to
descend in a gentle curve, as though the bright sky in which the stars
are set was spread across the cañon, resting on either wall, and
swayed down by its own weight. The stars appear to be in the cañon. I
soon discover that it is the bright star Vega, so it occurs to me to
designate this part of the wall as the “Cliff of the Harp.”
_June 9._--One of the party suggests that we call this the Cañon of
Lodore, and the name is adopted. Very slowly we make our way, often
climbing on the rocks at the edge of the water for a few hundred yards,
to examine the channel before running it.
During the afternoon, we come to a place where it is necessary to make
a portage. The little boat is landed, and the others are signaled to
come up.
When these rapids or broken falls occur, usually the channel is
suddenly narrowed by rocks which have been tumbled from the cliffs or
have been washed in by lateral streams. Immediately above the narrow,
rocky channel, on one or both sides, there is often a bay of quiet
water, in which we can land with ease. Sometimes the water descends
with a smooth, unruffled surface, from the broad, quiet spread above,
into the narrow, angry channel below, by a semicircular sag. Great
care must be taken not to pass over the brink into this deceptive pit,
but above it we can row with safety. I walk along the bank to examine
the ground, leaving one of my men with a flag to guide the other boats
to the landing-place. I soon see one of the boats make shore all
right and feel no more concern; but a minute after, I hear a shout,
and looking around, see one of the boats shooting down the center of
the sag. It is the _No Name_, with Captain Howland, his brother, and
Goodman. I feel that its going over is inevitable, and run to save the
third boat. A minute more, and she turns the point and heads for the
shore. Then I turn down stream again, and scramble along to look for
the boat that has gone over. The first fall is not great, only ten or
twelve feet, and we often run such; but below, the river tumbles down
again for forty or fifty feet, in a channel filled with dangerous
rocks that break the waves into whirlpools and beat them into foam. I
pass around a great crag just in time to see the boat strike a rock,
and, rebounding from the shock, careen and fill the open compartment
with water. Two of the men lose their oars; she swings around, and
is carried down at a rapid rate, broadside on, for a few yards, and
strikes amidships on another rock with great force, is broken quite in
two, and the men are thrown into the river; the larger part of the boat
floating buoyantly, they soon seize it, and down the river they drift,
past the rocks for a few hundred yards to a second rapid, filled with
huge boulders, where the boat strikes again, and is dashed to pieces,
and the men and fragments are soon carried beyond my sight. Running
along, I turn a bend, and see a man’s head above the water, washed
about in a whirlpool below a great rock.
It is Frank Goodman, clinging to it with a grip upon which life
depends. Coming opposite, I see Howland trying to go to his aid from
an island on which he has been washed. Soon, he comes near enough to
reach Frank with a pole, which he extends toward him. The latter lets
go the rock, grasps the pole, and is pulled ashore. Seneca Howland
is washed farther down the island, and is caught by some rocks, and,
though somewhat bruised, manages to get ashore in safety. This seems a
long time, as I tell it, but it is quickly done.
And now the three men are on an island, with a swift, dangerous river
on either side, and a fall below. The _Emma Dean_ is soon brought
down, and Sumner, starting above as far as possible, pushes out. Right
skillfully he plies the oars, and a few strokes set him on the island
at the proper point. Then they all pull the boat up stream, as far as
they are able, until they stand in water up to their necks. One sits
on a rock, and holds the boat until the others are ready to pull, then
gives the boat a push, clings to it with his hands, and climbs in as
they pull for mainland, which they reach in safety. We are as glad to
shake hands with them as though they had been on a voyage around the
world, and wrecked on a distant coast.
Down the river half a mile we find that the after cabin of the wrecked
boat, with a part of the bottom, ragged and splintered, has floated
against a rock, and stranded. There are valuable articles in the cabin;
but, on examination, we determine that life should not be risked to
save them. Of course, the cargo of rations, instruments, and clothing
is gone.
We return to the boats, and make camp for the night. No sleep comes to
me in all those dark hours. The rations, instruments, and clothing have
been divided among the boats, anticipating such an accident as this;
and we started with duplicates of everything that was deemed necessary
to success. But, in the distribution, there was one exception to this
precaution, and the barometers were all placed in one boat, and they
are lost. There is a possibility that they are in the cabin lodged
against the rock, for that is where they were kept. But, then, how to
reach them! The river is rising. Will they be there to-morrow? Can I go
out to Salt Lake City, and obtain barometers from New York?
_June 10._--I have determined to get the barometers from the wreck, if
they are there. After breakfast, while the men make the portage, I go
down again for another examination. There the cabin lies, only carried
fifty or sixty feet farther on.
Carefully looking over the ground, I am satisfied that it can be
reached with safety, and return to tell the men my conclusion. Sumner
and Dunn volunteer to take the little boat and make the attempt. They
start, reach it, and out come the barometers; and now the boys set up
a shout, and I join them, pleased that they should be as glad to save
the instruments as myself. When the boat lands on our side, I find that
the only things saved from the wreck were the barometers, a package of
thermometers, and a three gallon keg of whisky, which is what the men
were shouting about. They had taken it aboard, unknown to me, and now
I am glad they did, for they think it will do them good, as they are
drenched every day by the melting snow, which runs down the summits of
the Rocky Mountains.
Now we come back to our work at the portage. We find that it is
necessary to carry our rations over the rocks for nearly a mile, and
let our boats down with lines, except at a few points, where they also
must be carried.
Between the river and the eastern wall of the cañon there is an immense
talus of broken rocks. These have tumbled down from the cliffs above,
and constitute a vast pile of huge angular fragments. On these we build
a path for a quarter of a mile, to a small sand beach covered with
drift-wood, through which we clear a way for several hundred yards,
then continue the trail on over another pile of rocks, nearly half a
mile farther down, to a little bay. The greater part of the day is
spent in this work. Then we carry our cargoes down to the beach and
camp for the night.
While the men are building the camp fire, we discover an iron bake
oven, several tin plates, a part of a boat, and many other fragments,
which denote that this is the place where Ashley’s party was wrecked.
_June 11._--This day is spent in carrying our rations down to the
bay--no small task to climb over the rocks with sacks of flour or
bacon. We carry them by stages of about 500 yards each, and when night
comes, and the last sack is on the beach, we are tired, bruised, and
glad to sleep.
_June 12._--To-day we take the boats down to the bay. While at this
work, we discover three sacks of flour from the wrecked boat, that have
lodged in the rocks. We carry them above high-water mark, and leave
them, as our cargoes are already too heavy for the three remaining
boats. We also find two or three oars, which we place with them.
As Ashley and his party were wrecked here, and as we have lost one of
our boats at the same place, we adopt the name Disaster Falls for the
scene of so much peril and loss.
Though some of his companions were drowned, Ashley and one other
survived the wreck, climbed the cañon wall, and found their way across
the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City, living chiefly on berries,
as they wandered through an unknown and difficult country. When they
arrived at Salt Lake, they were almost destitute of clothing, and
nearly starved. The Mormon people gave them food and clothing, and
employed them to work on the foundation of the Temple, until they
had earned sufficient to enable them to leave the country. Of their
subsequent history, I have no knowledge. It is possible they returned
to the scene of the disaster, as a little creek entering the river
below is known as Ashley’s Creek, and it is reported that he built a
cabin and trapped on this river for one or two winters; but this may
have been before the disaster.
_June 13._--Still rocks, rapids, and portages.
We camp to-night at the foot of the left wall on a little patch of
flood-plain covered with a dense growth of box-elders, stopping early
in order to spread the clothing and rations to dry. Everything is wet
and spoiling.
_June 14._--Howland and I climb the wall, on the west side of the
cañon, to an altitude of 2,000 feet. Standing above, and looking to the
west, we discover a large park, five or six miles wide and twenty or
thirty long. The cliff we have climbed forms a wall between the cañon
and the park, for it is 800 feet, down the western side, to the valley.
A creek comes winding down, 1,200 feet above the river, and, entering
the intervening wall by a cañon, it plunges down, more than a thousand
feet, by a broken cascade, into the river below.
_June 15._--To-day, while we make another portage, a peak, standing
on the east wall, is climbed by two of the men, and found to be
2,700 feet above the river. On the east side of the cañon, a vast
amphitheater has been cut, with massive buttresses, and deep, dark
alcoves, in which grow beautiful mosses and delicate ferns, while
springs burst out from the further recesses, and wind, in silver
threads, over floors of sand rock. Here we have three falls in close
succession. At the first, the water is compressed into a very narrow
channel, against the right-hand cliff, and falls fifteen feet in ten
yards; at the second, we have a broad sheet of water, tumbling down
twenty feet over a group of rocks that thrust their dark heads through
the foaming waters. The third is a broken fall, or short, abrupt rapid,
where the water makes a descent of more than twenty feet among huge,
fallen fragments of the cliff. We name the group Triplet Falls.
We make a portage around the first; past the second and third we let
down with lines.
During the afternoon, Dunn and Howland, having returned from their
climb, we run down, three-quarters of a mile, on quiet water, and land
at the head of another fall. On examination, we find that there is an
abrupt plunge of a few feet, and then the river tumbles, for half a
mile, with a descent of a hundred feet, in a channel beset with great
numbers of huge boulders. This stretch of the river is named Hell’s
Half-Mile.
The remaining portion of the day is occupied in making a trail among
the rocks to the foot of the rapid.
_June 16._--Our first work this morning is to carry our cargoes to the
foot of the falls. Then we commence letting down the boats. We take two
of them down in safety, but not without great difficulty; for, where
such a vast body of water, rolling down an inclined plane, is broken
into eddies and cross currents by rocks projecting from the cliffs and
piles of boulders in the channel, it requires excessive labor and much
care to prevent their being dashed against the rocks or breaking away.
Sometimes we are compelled to hold the boat against a rock, above a
chute, until a second line, attached to the stem, is carried to some
point below, and, when all is ready, the first line is detached, and
the boat given to the current, when she shoots down, and the men below
swing her into some eddy.
At such a place, we are letting down the last boat, and, as she is set
free, a wave turns her broadside down the stream, with the stem, to
which the line is attached, from shore, and a little up. They haul on
the line to bring the boat in, but the power of the current, striking
obliquely against her, shoots her out into the middle of the river. The
men have their hands burned with the friction of the passing line; the
boat breaks away, and speeds, with great velocity, down the stream.
The _Maid of the Cañon_ is lost, so it seems; but she drifts some
distance, and swings into an eddy, in which she spins about, until we
arrive with the small boat, and rescue her.
Soon we are on our way again, and stop at the mouth of a little brook,
on the right, for a late dinner. This brook comes down from the distant
mountains, in a deep side cañon. We set out to explore it, but are soon
cut off from farther progress up the gorge by a high rock, over which
the brook glides in a smooth sheet. The rock is not quite vertical, and
the water does not plunge over in a fall.
Then we climb up to the left for an hour, and are a thousand feet
above the river, and six hundred above the brook. Just before us, the
cañon divides, a little stream coming down on the right, and another
on the left, and we can look away up either of these cañons, through
an ascending vista, to cliffs and crags and towers, a mile back, and
two thousand feet overhead. To the right, a dozen gleaming cascades
are seen. Pines and firs stand on the rocks and aspens overhang the
brooks. The rocks below are red and brown, set in deep shadows, but
above, they are buff and vermilion, and stand in the sunshine. The
light above, made more brilliant by the bright-tinted rocks, and the
shadows below more gloomy by the somber hues of the brown walls,
increase the apparent depths of the cañons, and it seems a long way
up to the world of sunshine and open sky, and a long way down to the
bottom of the cañon glooms. Never before have I received such an
impression of the vast heights of these cañon walls; not even at the
Cliff of the Harp, where the very heavens seemed to rest on their
summits.
We sit on some overhanging rocks, and enjoy the scene for a time,
listening to the music of falling waters away up the cañons. We name
this Rippling Brook.
Late in the afternoon we make a short run to the mouth of another
little creek, coming down from the left into an alcove filled with
luxuriant vegetation. Here camp is made with a group of cedars on one
side and a dense mass of box-elders and dead willows on the other.
I go up to explore the alcove. While away a whirlwind comes, scattering
the fire among the dead willows and cedar-spray, and soon there is a
conflagration. The men rush for the boats, leaving all they cannot
readily seize at the moment, and even then they have their clothing
burned and hair singed, and Bradley has his ears scorched. The cook
fills his arms with the mess-kit, and, jumping into a boat, stumbles
and falls, and away go our cooking utensils into the river. Our plates
are gone; our spoons are gone; our knives and forks are gone. “Water
catch ’em; h-e-a-p catch ’em.”
When on the boats, the men are compelled to cut loose, as the flames,
running out on the overhanging willows, are scorching them. Loose on
the stream, they must go down, for the water is too swift to make
headway against it. Just below is a rapid, filled with rocks. On they
shoot, no channel explored, no signal to guide them. Just at this
juncture I chance to see them, but have not yet discovered the fire,
and the strange movements of the men fill me with astonishment. Down
the rocks I clamber, and run to the bank. When I arrive, they have
landed. Then we all go back to the late camp to see if anything left
behind can be saved. Some of the clothing and bedding taken out of the
boats is found, also a few tin cups, basins, and a camp kettle, and
this is all the mess kit we now have. Yet we do just as well as ever.
_June 17._--We run down to the mouth of Yampa River. This has been a
chapter of disasters and toils, notwithstanding which the Cañon of
Lodore was not devoid of scenic interest, even beyond the power of pen
to tell. The roar of its waters was heard unceasingly from the hour we
entered it until we landed here. No quiet in all that time. But its
walls and cliffs, its peaks and crags, its amphitheaters and alcoves,
tell a story of beauty and grandeur that I hear yet--and shall hear.
* * * * *
The Cañon of Lodore is twenty and three-quarter miles in length. It
starts abruptly at what we have called the Gate of Lodore, with walls
nearly two thousand feet high, and they are never lower than this until
we reach Alcove Brook, about three miles above the foot. They are
very irregular, standing in vertical or overhanging cliffs in places,
terraced in others, or receding in steep slopes, and are broken by many
side gulches and cañons. The highest point on the wall is at Dunn’s
Cliff, near Triplet Falls, where the rocks reach an altitude of 2,700
feet, but the peaks a little way back rise nearly a thousand feet
higher. Yellow pines, nut pines, firs, and cedars stand in extensive
forests on the Uinta Mountains, and, clinging to the rocks and growing
in the crevices, come down the walls to the water’s edge from Flaming
Gorge to Echo Park. The red sandstones are lichened over; delicate
mosses grow in the moist places, and ferns festoon the walls.