The Romance of the Colorado River Part 2

Coronado proceeded eastward to about the western line of Missouri, and, finding colonisation anywhere in the regions visited out of the question, he returned in 1542 to Mexico, with his entire army excepting a couple of padres.

CHAPTER III

The Grand Canyon--Character of the Colorado River--The Water-G.o.ds; Erosion and Corrosion--The Natives and their Highways--The "Green River Valley" of the Old Trappers--The Strange Vegetation and Some Singular Animals.

The stupendous chasm known as the Grand Canyon, discovered by Cardenas in the autumn of 1540, is the most remarkable feature of this extraordinary river, and at the same time is one of the marvels of the world. Though discovered so long ago that we make friends with the conquistadores when we approach its history, it remained, with the other canyons of the river, a problem for 329 years thereafter, that is, till 1869. Discovery does not mean knowledge, and knowledge does not mean publicity. In the case of this gorge, with its immense length and countless tributary chasms, the view Cardenas obtained was akin to a dog's discovery of the moon. It has practically been several times re-discovered. Indeed, each person who first looks into the abyss has a sensation of being a discoverer, for the scene is so weird and lonely and so incomprehensible in its novelty that one feels that it could never have been viewed before. And it IS rather a discovery for each individual, because no amount of verbal or pictorial description can ever fully prepare the spectator for, the sublime reality. Even when one becomes familiar with the incomparable spectacle it never ceases to astonish. A recent writer has well said: "The sublimity of the Pyramids is endurable, but at the rim of the Grand Canyon we feel outdone."*

Outdone is exactly the right word. Nowhere else can man's insignificance be so burned into his soul as here, where his ingenuity and power count for naught.

* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.

Cardenas, after all, was only one of the discoverers. He was merely the first WHITE man who saw it. When was it that the first MAN recoiled from the edge of that then actually unknown masterpiece of the Water-G.o.ds, who so persistently plied their tools in the forgotten ages? He was the real discoverer and he will never be known. As applied to new countries--new to our race--the term "unknown" is relative. Each fresh explorer considers his the deed that shall permanently be recorded, no matter who has gone before, and the Patties and the Jedediah Smiths are forgotten. In these later years some who have dared the terrors of the merciless river in the Grand Canyon spoke of it as the "Great Unknown,"

forgetting the deed of Powell; and when Lieutenant Wheeler laboriously succeeded in dragging his boats up to the mouth of Diamond Creek, he said: "NOW the exploration is completed." HE forgot the deed of Powell.

A recent writer mentions the north-western corner of Arizona as a "mysterious wilderness."* He forgot that it was thoroughly explored years ago. Wilderness it may be, if that means spa.r.s.ely settled, but mysterious?--no. It is all known and on record.

* Ray Stannard Baker, Century Magazine, May, 1902.

The Grand Canyon may be likened to an inverted mountain range. Imagine a great mountain chain cast upside down in plaster. Then all the former ridges and spurs of the range become tributary canyons and gulches running back twenty or thirty miles into the surrounding country, growing shallower and shallower as the distance increases from the central core, just as the great spurs and ridges of a mountain range, descending, melt finally into the plain. Often there are parts where the central gorge is narrow and precipitous, just as a mountain range frequently possesses mighty precipices. But it is an error to think of great canyons as mere slits in the ground, dark and gloomy, like a deep well from whose depths stars may be sighted at midday. Minor canyons sometimes approach this character, as, for example, the canyon of the upper Virgen, called Parunuweap, fifteen hundred feet deep and no more than twenty to thirty feet wide, with vertical walls, but I have never been in a canyon from which stars were visible in daylight, nor have I ever known anyone who had. The light is about the same as that at the bottom of a narrow street flanked by very high buildings. The walls may sometimes be gloomy from their colour, or may seem so from the circ.u.mstances under which one views them, but aside from the fact that any deep, shut-in valley or canyon may become oppressive, there is nothing specially gloomy about a deep canyon. The sun usually falls more or less in every canyon, no matter how narrow or deep. It may fall to the very bottom most of the day, or only for an hour or two, depending on the trend of the canyon with reference to the sun's course. At the bottom of the Kanab where it joins the Grand, the sunlight in November remains in the bottom just two hours, but outside in the main gorge the time is very much longer.

The walls of a great canyon, and usually a small one, are terraced; seldom are they wholly vertical for their entire height, though occasionally they may approach this condition on one side or the other, and more rarely on both sides at once, depending on the geological formations of the locality. Owing to the immense height of the walls of such canyons as those on the Colorado, the cliffs frequently appear perpendicular when they are far from it, just as a mountain peak often seems to tower over one's head when in reality it may be a considerable distance off. In the nature of the formation and development of canyons, they could not long retain continuous vertical walls. What Powell calls the "recession of cliffs" comes into play. The erosive and corrasive power of water being the chief land sculptors, it is evident that there will be a continual wearing down of the faces of the bounding cliffs.

The softer beds will be cut away faster than the harder, and where these underlie the harder the latter will be undermined and fall. Every canyon is always widening at its top and sides, through the action of rain, frost, and wind, as well as deepening through the action of its flowing stream. EROSION is this power which carves away the cliffs, and CORRASION the one which saws at the bottom, the latter term, in geological nomenclature, meaning the cutting power of running water.*

This cutting power varies according to the declivity and the amount of sediment carried in suspension. It is plain that a stream having great declivity will be able to carry more sediment than one having little, and in a barren country would always be highly charged with sand, which would cut and scour the bed of the channel like a grindstone. As Dutton says, a river cuts, however, only its own width, the rest of a canyon being the "work of the forces of erosion, the wind, frost, and rain."

That is why we have canyons. The powers of erosion are far slower than those of corrasion, especially in an arid region, because they are intermittent. Where rocks take a polish, as in Marble Canyon, the scouring and polis.h.i.+ng work of corrasion is seen in the s.h.i.+ning bright surface as far as the water rises. This all belongs to the romance of the Water-G.o.ds, those marvellous land sculptors.

* The introduction of this subject may seem unnecessary to the general reader, but no just comprehension of this river can be reached without some knowledge of the forces creating its chasms.

To produce canyons like those of the Colorado, peculiar and unusual conditions are necessary. There must exist a vast region lying high above sea-level. This region must be arid. Out of it must rise separated mountain ma.s.ses to such heights that they shall be well watered.

These most elevated regions alone having abundant rain and snowfall, torrential streams are generated and poured down upon the arid wastes, where they persistently scour their beds, ploughing deep channels below the level of their surroundings. The perpendicularity of the walls of these channels, or canyons as they are called, depends on the volume and continuity of the flowing stream, on the aridity of the country through which they are cut, and on the rock-formation. A fierce and continuous torrent, where the rainfall is at the minimum, will so speedily outrival the forces of erosion that the canyon will have vertical walls. An example is seen in those frequent "mud" canyons found in arid regions, where some brook, having its source in highlands, cuts a channel through clay or dry earth with vertical sides, that stand for years. As long as the surface of the adjacent lands is undisturbed, it acts like a roof, throwing off the water that falls upon it into the main stream.* Thus the foundations of these walls are not a.s.sailed from BEHIND, which is their weakest point. If the land surface is broken up, permitting the rains to soak in and saturate the clay or earth, the whole ma.s.s becomes softened and will speedily fall and slide out into the canyon.** The sides of all canyons in an arid region are more or less protected in the same way. That is, the rains fall suddenly, rarely continuously for any length of time, and are collected and conducted away immediately, not having a chance to enter the ground. h.o.m.ogeneous sandstone preserves its perpendicularity better than other rocks, one reason being that it does not invite percolation, and usually offers, for a considerable distance on each side of the canyon, barren and impervious surfaces to the rains.

Where strata rest on exposed softer beds, these are undermined from the front, and in this way recession is brought about.

* Just as wheat flour getting wet on the surface protects the portion below from dampness. The rainfall is often so slight, also, that a surface is unchanged for years. I once saw some wagon tracks that were made by our party three years before. From peculiar circ.u.mstances I was able to identify them.

** Robert Brewster Stanton explained this very clearly in his investigations for the Canadian Pacific Railway into the causes of land-slides on that line.

In the basin of the Colorado are found in perfection all the extraordinary conditions that are needed to bring forth mammoth canyons.

The headwaters of all the important tributaries are INVARIABLY IN THE HIGHEST REGIONS and at a long distance from their mouths, so that the flood waters have many miles of opportunity to run a race with the comparatively feeble erosive forces of desert lands. The main stream-courses are thus in the lower arid regions and in sedimentary formations, while their water-supply comes from far away. The deepest gorges, therefore, will be found where the rainfall is least, unless diminis.h.i.+ng alt.i.tude interferes. Thus the greatest gorge of the whole basin, the Grand Canyon, is the one farthest from the sources of supply, and in the driest area, but one, of the whole drainage system. It ends abruptly with the termination of the high arid plateau which made it possible, but had this plateau extended farther, the Grand Canyon would also have extended a similar distance. It is plain then that the cutting of these canyons depends on the amount of water (snow is included) which may fall in the high mountains, the canyons themselves being in the drier districts. It is also clear that if, by some chance, the precipitation of the high sources should increase, the corrasion of the stream-beds in the canyons would likewise increase and outrun with still greater ease the erosion of their immediate surroundings. On the other hand, if the precipitation in the arid surroundings should increase, the wearing down of the side walls would for a time--till covered by debris and vegetation--go on more rapidly till, instead of Canyons of the Colorado River type, there would be deep, sharp valleys, or wide valleys, according to the amount of difference between the precipitation of the low lands and the high. Where the two were nearly the same, that is, a balance of precipitation,* the slopes might be rounded and verdure-clad, though this would depend on the AMOUNT of precipitation.

On lower Snake River a change seems to be going on. The former canyon-cliffs are covered by debris and vegetation, but in places the old dry cliff-lines can be discerned beneath like a skeleton.

The precipitation there has not been great enough to destroy the old lines--only enough to mask them.

* There could be a balance of precipitation and still very little snow- or rainfall, or they might be very great.

The "inner gorge" of the Grand Canyon appears to have been cut far more rapidly than the outer one, and at a much later period; were this not the case there would be no inner gorge. It is a singular fact that some side canyons, the Kanab, for example, while now possessing no running water, or at best a puny rivulet, and depending for their corrasion on intermittent floods, meet on equal terms the great Colorado, the giant that never for a second ceases its ferocious attack. Admitting that the sharper declivity of the Kanab would enhance its power of corrasion, nevertheless we should expect to see it approach the Grand Canyon by leaps and bounds, like the Havasupai farther down, but, on the contrary, there are parts that appear to be at a standstill in corrasion, or even filling up, and its floor is a regular descent, except for the last three or four miles where the canyon is clogged by huge rocks that seem to have fallen from above. The maximum height of its present flood-waters is about six feet, proved by a fern-covered calcareous deposit, projecting some fifteen feet, caused by a spring (Shower-Bath Spring) on the side of the wall, seven or eight miles above the mouth, which is never permitted by the floods to build nearer the floor of the canyon. A suspicion arises, on contemplating some of these apparent discrepancies, that the prevailing conditions of corrasion are not what they were at some earlier period, when they were such that it was rendered more rapid and violent; that there was perhaps an epoch when these deep-cut tributary canyons carried perennial streams, and when the volume of the Colorado itself was many times greater, possessing a multiplied corrasive power, while the adjacent areas were about as arid as now. At such a time, perhaps, the Colorado performed the main work of the inner gorge, the Kanab, and similar affluents, their deep now rather evenly graded canyons. Such an increase of volume, if we suppose the aridity to remain as now, could have come about only by an increase of precipitation on the mountain summits. During the Glacial Epoch, the Rocky Mountain summits were considerably glaciated, the amount varying according to alt.i.tude and lat.i.tude. The general topography of the Colorado River was about as it is to-day, and the rainfall in the valleys probably nearly the same, or at least only a little greater. In other words, the conditions were those of to-day intensified. In summer, then, the amount of water seeking outlet by these drainage channels to the sea was enormously multiplied, and the corrasive power was correspondingly augmented. When the ice caps finally began to permanently diminish, the summer floods were doubtless terrific. The waters of the Colorado now rise in the Grand Canyon, on the melting of the snows in the distant mountains, from forty to one hundred feet; the rise must then have amounted to from one hundred to four hundred or more. The Kanab heads in two very high regions--the Pink Cliffs and the Kaibab. Though probably not high enough to be heavily glaciated they were high enough to receive an increased snowfall and to hold it, or a portion of it, over from one year to another. Thus the canyons having their origin on these high regions would be given perennial streams, with torrential floods each summer, compared with which anything that now comes down the Kanab would be a mere rivulet. The summit of the Kaibab is covered with peculiar pocket-like basins having no apparent outlets. These were possibly glacial sinks, conducting away some of the surplus water from the melting snow and ice by subterranean channels. It seems probable, therefore, that glacial flood-waters were an important factor in the formation of the canyons of the Colorado. If this supposition is correct it would account, at least in a measure, for that distinct impression of arrested activity one receives from the present conditions obtaining there.*

* Some canyon floors, where there is no permanent large stream, appear to have altogether ceased descending. Dutton says of those which drain the Terrace Plateaus: "Many of them are actually filling up, the floods being unable to carry away all the sand and clay which the infrequent rains wash into them."--Tertiary History, p. 50. See also pp.

196 and 228 Ib.

The drainage at the edges of most canyons is back and away from the gorge itself. The reason is that the rains cannot flow evenly over a canyon brink, owing to irregularities of surface, and once an irregular drainage is established, the water seeks the easiest road. A side canyon is formed, draining a certain area. Another is formed elsewhere, and another, and so on till all drainage is through these tributaries and away from the brink, by more or less circuitous channels to the main stream. This backward drainage leaves the immediate brink, or "rim,"

till the last, in its work of erosion and corrasion, and the rim consequently is left higher than the region away from it. This effect of a backward drainage is very plain on both sides of the Grand Canyon, though it is somewhat a.s.sisted, on the north at least, by the backward dip of the strata. It may be modified by other conditions, so that it would not always be the case.

The basin of the Colorado, excepting that part below the mouth of the Virgen and a portion among the "parks" of the western slope of the Rocky Mountain range, is almost entirely a plateau region. Some of the plateaus are very dry; others rise above the arid zone and are well watered. The latter are called the "High Plateaus." They reach an alt.i.tude of eleven thousand feet above the sea. They are east of the Great Basin, and with the other plateaus form an area called by Powell "The Plateau Province." Eastward still the plateaus merge into the "parks." The High Plateaus, as a topographical feature, are a southern continuation of the Wasatch Mountains. They terminate on the south in the Markagunt, the Paunsagunt, and the Aquarius Plateaus. The extreme southern extremities of the two former are composed of mighty precipices of columnarly eroded limestone called the Pink Cliffs. Here is the beginning of the Terrace Plateaus, likewise bounded by vertical, barren cliffs. Between the High Plateaus and the parks, the plateaus may be called, for convenience, Mesa Plateaus, as they are generally outlined by vertical cliffs. This is the case also south of the end of the High Plateaus where, stepping down the great terraces, we arrive at the region immediately adjacent to the Grand Canyon, composed of four plateaus, three of them of mesa character, the Shewits, Uinkaret, Kanab, and Kaibab; and up at the head of Marble Canyon a fifth, the Paria, while still farther to the north-eastward is the Kaiparowitz. The edges of these Mesa Plateaus, precipitous cliffs, stretch for many miles across the arid land like mountain ranges split asunder. This region, lying between the High Plateaus, the Grand Wash, the Henry Mountains, and the Colorado, is perhaps the most fascinating of all the basin. The relief map at page 41 gives the larger part of it. In the basin there are also great mountain ma.s.ses, the fountainheads of the waters which have carved the canyons. These are Uinta, Zuni, San Francisco, Henry, Pine Valley, Uinkaret, Beaver Dam, Virgen, Navajo, La Sal, and others, some reaching an alt.i.tude of more than twelve thousand feet. The highest peaks of these, and of course those of the Continental Divide on the east, which furnish a large proportion of the water of the Colorado, and the Wind River Mountains on the extreme north, have snow-banks throughout the summer. To show how dependent the Colorado is on the high peaks for its flood-waters, I will mention that it is not till the snows of these high alt.i.tudes are fiercely attacked by the sun in May and June that the river has its annual great rise. It would take only a slight lowering of the mean annual temperature now to furnish these peaks with ice caps. The rainfall in the lower arid regions is from three to ten inches, increasing northward to fifteen and twenty-five. On the peaks, of course, it is much greater. Almost any climate can be had, from the hot arid to the wet frigid. On the lower stretches, from Mohave down, the thermometer in summer stands around 112 degrees F. a great deal of the time, and reaches 118 degrees F. Yet Dr. Coues said he felt it no more than he did the summer heat of New York or Was.h.i.+ngton.* In winter the temperature at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is very mild, and flowers bloom most of the time. One November I descended from the snow-covered top of the Kaibab to the Grand Canyon at the mouth of the Kanab, where I was able to bathe in the open air with entire comfort.

* I was at the Needles one summer for a brief time, and the air seemed very oppressive to me.

There are six chief topographical features, canyons, cliffs, valleys, mesa plateaus, high plateaus, mountains. There are two grand divisions: the lowland or desert, below the Virgen, and the plateau, but the topography of the immediate river course separates itself into four parts, the Green River Valley, the canyon, the valley-canyon, and the alluvial. The canyon part is the longest, occupying about two-thirds of the whole, or about 1200 miles. It is cut mainly through the plateaus.

The last of these southward is the Colorado, a vast upheaval reaching from the lower end of the Grand Canyon south-east to about where the 34th parallel crosses the western line of New Mexico. Lieutenant Wheeler several times claims the honour of naming it (1868-71), but the name occurs on Lieutenant Ives's map of 1858. This plateau breaks sharply along its south-west line to the lowland district, and on its north-westerly edge slopes to the Little Colorado. It bears a n.o.ble pine forest, and from its summit rise to over 12,000 feet the volcanic peaks of the San Francisco Mountains. Its northern edge is the Grand Canyon, which separates it from its kindred on the other side. These and the Colorado Plateau rise to from 6000 to 8000 feet above sea-level, and it is through this huge ma.s.s that the river has ground out the Grand Canyon, by corrading its bed down tremendously, the bottom at the end being only 840 feet above the sea, whereas the start at the mouth of the Little Colorado is 2690. Yet here it is already 3500 feet below the surface at the end of Marble Canyon, which, separated only by the deep canyon of the Little Colorado, is practically a northward continuation of the Grand Canyon itself. As the river runs, the Grand Canyon is 217 1/2 miles long. To this may be added the 65 1/2 miles of Marble, giving a continuous chasm of 283 miles, the longest, deepest, and most difficult of pa.s.sage in every direction of any canyon in the world. The depth begins with a couple of hundred feet at Lee's Ferry (mouth of the Paria), the head of Marble Canyon, and steadily deepens to some 3500 feet near the Little Colorado, where the sudden uplift of the Kaibab lends about 2000 feet more to the already magnificent gorge. Along the end of the Kaibab the walls, for a long distance, reach their greatest height, about 6000 feet, but the other side is considerably lower than the north all the way through. At the mouth of the Kanab the alt.i.tude of the river-bed is 1800 feet above the sea, showing a fall in the interval of 890 feet. The greatest declivity is about 210 feet in 10 miles, in what is termed the Kaibab division, extending from a point 10 miles below the Little Colorado to a point 58 miles farther down. Here the smooth stretches of river are long, the rapids short and violent. Here, also, is the "granite," making the walls sombre, as the colour is slaty to black. At the mouth of Diamond Creek the river is still 1300 feet higher than the sea, giving a fall of 500 feet from the Kanab. There is another descent of 460 feet to the Grand Wash, and then 149 to the mouth of the Virgen. Next to the Kaibab division of the Grand Canyon, the greatest declivity occurs in the Uinta region, in the Canyon of Lodore.

The profile of the river in these two districts is approximately given on page 57. The average depth of the Grand Canyon is about 4000 feet.

Its width at the top varies from 4 1/2 to 12 miles. This is the extreme outer cliff-line. The inner gorge is much narrower, at the Toroweap being only about 3500 feet. The river varies in width from 500 or 600 feet to 75 or 100. In this canyon is water-power enough to run the machinery of the world, and there is as much more in the canyons above.

Joining Marble Canyon on the north is Glen, 149 miles long, from the Paria to Fremont River. It has but one rapid of consequence. At high water, with the exception of this rapid, the tide sweeps smoothly and swiftly down with a majestic flow. The walls are h.o.m.ogeneous sandstone, in places absolutely perpendicular for about a thousand feet. I have stood on the brink and dropped a stone into the river. The highest walls are 1600 feet. Next is Narrow Canyon, about 9 miles long, 1300 feet deep, and no rapids. It is hardly more than the finish of Cataract, a superb gorge about 40 miles long with a depth of 2700 feet, often nearly vertical. The rapids here are many and violent, the total fall being about 450 feet. At its head is the mouth of the Grand River. The alt.i.tude of the junction is 3860 feet.* Following up the Green, we have first Stillwater, then Labyrinth Canyon, much alike, the first 42 3/4 and the second 62 1/2 miles in length. The walls of sandstone are 1300 feet. Their names well describe them, though the stillwater of the first is very swift and straight. There are no rapids in either. All these canyon names, from Green River Valley to the Grand Wash, were applied by Powell. Between Labyrinth and the next canyon, Gray, so called from the colour of its walls, 2000 feet high, is Gunnison Valley, where the river may first be easily crossed. Here the unfortunate Captain Gunnison, in 1853, pa.s.sed over on his way to his doom, and here, too, the Old Spanish Trail led the traveller in former days toward Los Angeles. The Denver and Rio Grande Western Railway has taken advantage of the same place to cross. The 36 miles of Gray are hardly more than a continuation of the Canyon of Desolation's 97 miles. Desolation is a fine chasm, whose walls are 2400 feet. The view on page 206 gives an excellent idea of their average character. The mouth of the Uinta River, not far above its head, is 4670 feet above the sea, while Gunnison Valley is 4083, showing a descent for the river, in Desolation and Gray, together of 587 feet.

Desolation is full of rapids, some of them bad. Wonsits Valley, which succeeds Desolation, is the longest of the few valleys, being about 87 miles, with a width of 6 or 8 miles. There is a considerable amount of arable land, and along the river bank large groves of cottonwood trees.

The river course is winding, the current sluggish, the width being 600 to 800 feet. At the head of this valley is Split-Mountain Canyon, 8 miles long, with ragged, craggy walls 2700 feet high. It contains a number of medium rapids. Island Park separates it from Whirlpool Canyon.

It is a charming little valley, full of islands, a mere expansion of the walls, 9 miles long,--9 miles of rainbow, for the surrounding rocks and marls are of every hue. Whirlpool, 2400 feet deep, is about 14 miles in length and contains a number of rapids, but the whirlpools depend on the stage of water. Then comes the beautiful little Echo Park, really only the head of Whirlpool. Its name is derived from a wonderful echo of ten words returned from the smooth wall seen in the cut on page 203. It is only a mile long with walls of 600 feet. At its head enter the Yampa River and Canyon, which mark the foot of Lodore, the most striking gorge, next to the Grand Canyon, on the whole river. Lodore is only 20 miles long, but it is 20 miles of concentrated water-power energy and grandeur, the fall being about 400 feet, the walls 2700. Never for a moment does it relax its a.s.sault, and the voyager on its restless, relentless tide, especially at high water, is kept on the alert. The waters indeed come rus.h.i.+ng down with fearful impetuosity, recalling to Powell the poem of Southey, on the Lodore he knew, hence the name. The beginning of the gorge is at the foot of Brown's Park through what is called the Gate of Lodore, an abrupt gash in the Uinta Mountains 2000 feet deep. In viewing this entrance the ordinary spectator is at a loss to comprehend how the stream could have begun its attack upon this precipitous ridge. The theory that the river was there before the upheaval formed the mountain does not entirely satisfy, for it would seem in that case that the canyon walls would long ago have become much more broken down than they are. But the walls have a strikingly fresh look, as if formed recently, compared with the time of the original upheaval. It seems possible that there may have been in this region some great lake which lifted the waters up to the top of the ridge to begin their work of corrasion. Such lakes did exist; but lack of s.p.a.ce forbids the further pursuit of this discussion here.

* The character of the Grand River is similar to that of the Green, but the canyons above the mouth of the Dolores are not so long nor so deep. The river also carries less water.

Brown's Park, originally called Brown's Hole, after one of the early trappers, is a fine valley about 35 miles long and 5 or 6 miles wide. It is, like the few other valleys, an expansion of the canyon walls.

There is considerable arable land, and the place possesses a remarkable climate. Though its general level is so high, around 5500 feet, it receives hardly any snow, and for this reason was long a favourite place for wintering cattle on the drive from Texas to California. It was a great rendezvous, also, for the early trappers and traders, and here stood Fort Davy Crockett, in those days famous. It was one of those necessary places of refuge and meeting, established when the trappers were pursuing their extermination of the beaver, which once were so numerous in all the Western country. The river enters this park from the solitudes of Red Canyon, a splendid chasm, 25 miles long, 2500 feet deep, and abounding in plunging waters. The name is from the colour of the sandstone walls. Above it are three short canyons, Kingfisher, Horseshoe, and Flaming Gorge, aggregating about 10 miles. There are there no rapids worth mentioning, but the scenic beauty is entrancing.

The walls are from 1200 to 1600 feet, in places extremely precipitous.

Flaming Gorge, with walls 1300 feet, is particularly distinguished by being the beginning of the long series of close canyons. The river enters suddenly from Green River Valley, repeating on a smaller scale the conditions at the entrance to Lodore. From here on up to the Wind River Range the stream is flanked by occasional cliffs and b.u.t.tes, but the country is comparatively open, and the many tributaries often have fine gra.s.sy bottoms. This was the locality of the great rendezvous of the period from 1825 to 1835, and even later.

Green River Valley is an elevated region, from six thousand to seven thousand feet above sea. It stretches from the Wind River Mountains on the north to the Uintas on the south, and is bounded westwardly by the Wyoming Range, and on the east merges into the Laramie Plains. The drainage exit is through the Uintas, as noted, by means of the canyons heading at Flaming Gorge. There are here opportunities for extensive farming by irrigation. The only other chance for agriculture on the river, except Wonsits Valley, Brown's Park, and a few minor places, is below Black Canyon, in the stretches I have called the alluvial and the canyon-valley divisions. In the latter short canyons separate extensive valleys with wide alluvial bottoms capable of high cultivation, though often subject to overflow. Almost anything will grow there. Vast groves of cottonwood and mesquite exist. In the alluvial division, the last stretch of the river, from the Gila down, cotton and sugar cane would probably grow. This is the only division where the water of the river can be extensively diverted. At the mouth of the Gila an old emigrant road to California crossed, and another here in this Green River Valley.

A third route of travel was by way of Gunnison's Crossing; and a fourth, though this was seldom traversed, was by the Crossing of the Fathers, some thirty-five miles above the present Lee's Ferry. In Green River Valley, Bonneville built his Fort Nonsense, and the region was for many years the best known of any place beyond the mountains. The routes of trappers and prospectors frequently followed aid native trails, which crossed and recrossed the country in every direction, except where the canyons of the Green and Colorado were approached, when few lines of traverse were open across, and none along the course of the water.

On the headwaters of Green River lived the Crows, who called it the Seedskedee Agie or Prairie Hen River. The Snakes and Utes living farther down called it the Bitter-root. Fremont called it the Rio Verde of the Spaniards, but apparently without good authority. It was also spoken of as Spanish River, from the report that Spaniards occupied its lower valleys. Colorado was also one of its names, and this is what it should have remained. The commonest appellation was Green, supposed to have been derived from a trapper of that name. Just when the term "Colorado"

was first applied to the lower river is not now known. It bore several names, but finally Colorado took first place because of its appropriateness. Both the walls and the water are usually red, though the name is undoubtedly derived from the colour of the water. Green River is frequently as red as any river could be. After a storm in the headwaters of Vermilion Creek I have seen the Green a positively bright vermilion.

The Arapahos were said to range into Brown's Park; the Utes were all along the Wonsits Valley and below it on both sides of the river. Then came the Navajos, ranging up to the San Juan and above.* On the north side, below the San Juan, were the various bands of Pai Utes, while on the south were the Puebloan tribes, with the Apaches, Suppais, Wallapais, etc., while still below came the Mohaves, Cocopas, and Yumas, with, on the Gila, the Pimas, Papagos, and Maricopas. The 250,000 square miles of the basin were variously apportioned amongst these tribes, but their territorial claims were usually well defined.