The Romance of the Colorado River Part 8

Powell, as noted, had been a volunteer officer in the Civil War. After that he was connected with the Wesleyan University at Bloomington, Illinois, and with the Normal University at Normal, in the same state.

Sumner, generally known as Jack Sumner, had also been a soldier in the late war. He was fair-haired and delicate-looking, but with a strong const.i.tution. Dunn had been a hunter and trapper. Walter Powell was Major Powell's youngest brother. He had been in the late war and had there suffered cruelly by capture and imprisonment. Bradley was an orderly sergeant of regulars, had served in the late war, and resigned from the army to join this party. O. G. Howland had been a printer.

Seneca Howland was his younger brother. Goodman was a young Englishman.

Hawkins had been a soldier in the late war, and Andrew Hall was a Scotch boy nineteen years old.

The spring was chosen for the beginning of the voyage because the Green then is at flood and there would be less trouble about floating the boats through the shoal places and amongst the rocks. The river in some respects is safer at a lower stage of water, but the work is harder.

This, however, was not known then, and Powell had to take his chances at the flood. On May 24, 1869, the boats were manned and soon were carried out of sight of the haphazard group of houses which at that time const.i.tuted this frontier settlement of Green River. They were heavily laden, for ten months' rations were carried, as Powell expected when winter came to be obliged to halt and make a permanent camp till spring.

He calculated the river might be filled with ice. It has since been ascertained, however, that the Colorado proper rarely has any ice in it.

I remember once hearing that a great many years ago it was frozen over in the neighbourhood of Lee's Ferry, where for a little distance the current is not rapid. Powell was providing for every contingency he could think of, and trouble with ice was a possible one. But even without ice the water in winter is so cold that, as men who make the descent must continually be saturated by the breaking waves and by the necessity of frequently jumping overboard in avoiding rocks, the danger of pneumonia is really greater than that from wreck. They had an abundance of warm clothing for winter, plenty of ammunition, two or three dozen traps, tools of various kinds, nails, screws; etc. In the line of scientific instruments there were two s.e.xtants, four chronometers, a number of barometers, thermometers, compa.s.ses, etc. With the exception of the Emma Dean, which had on board only instruments and clothing, the boats were loaded in such a way that if one should be lost the expedition would still possess a variety of articles and food.

The first day they met with the usual number of minor accidents, such as a starting expedition of this kind is seldom free from, like breaking an oar, running on a shoal, and so on, but all went very well, and when the evening came an early camp was made, and Powell climbed up and away from the river to survey the situation.

"Standing on a high point," he says, "I can look off in every direction over a vast landscape with salient rocks and cliffs glittering in the evening sun. Dark shadows are settling in the valleys and gulches, and the heights are made higher, and the depths deeper by the glamour and witchery of light and shade. Away to the south, the Uinta mountains stretch in a long line; high peaks thrust into the sky, and snow-fields glittering like lakes of molten silver; and pine forests in sombre green; and rosy clouds playing around the borders of huge black ma.s.ses; and heights and clouds and mountains and snow-fields and forests and rock-lands are blended into one grand view."

This was the country before him. The Uinta Mountains, stretching their picturesque and mighty barrier across the determined course of the river, produce the first series of superb canyons on the threshold of which Powell and his daring band were now setting foot. On the third day they were at Henry's Fork, in the neighbourhood of that first camp in this locality made by Ashley in 1825, and of his start in the experiment in canyon running which so nearly terminated his brilliant career. The "Suck," noted for its danger among the early trappers, was easily pa.s.sed and Powell makes no mention of it. So far as I can ascertain there were two records kept on this expedition, one by Powell on strips of brown paper, and the other by Jack Sumner on foolscap. The latter, comprised in some six or eight pages, was the more complete, I believe, and is now in Was.h.i.+ngton. I have not seen it since 1871, when we were in the habit of daily reading its thrilling pages to find out what we might next expect in our descent. If any other diary or journal was kept by the men of this expedition I have not heard of it.

The first rapid is in Horseshoe Canyon, and it was no obstacle, being small and docile, but when they had gone through the next canyon, named Kingfisher, they found themselves at the beginning of a new and closer, deeper gorge, Red Canyon, where the waters first begin to exhibit their grim intention. Here they encountered real rapids, the boats often das.h.i.+ng along at railroad speed, the waves fiercely breaking over them, and bailing becoming an imperative accomplishment. The attempt of a Ute to run through this canyon was described in picturesque terms by one of the tribe. "Rocks, heap, heap, high," he said; "water go hoowoogh, hoowoogh; water-pony heap buck; water catch um; no see um Injun any more! no see um squaw any more! no see um papoose any more!" and thus begins and ends the only history of native navigation on this upper river I ever heard of.

After considerable hard work the party reached a particularly sharp, though not very high, fall, announced before arrival by a loud and angry roar. Here a portage was deemed wise, and the goods were carried up over the huge broken rocks and so on down to a point well below the foot of the drop, where the cargoes were again restored to the boats, which meanwhile had been lowered by lines. It was here that the name of Ashley and a year date were found inscribed on a rock. Of this I made a careful copy in 1871, which is given on page 112. The second figure could, of course, be only an 8, and the fourth was plainly a 5. The third, however, was obscure, and Powell was uncertain whether it was a 3 or a 5. It could have been nothing but a 2, because, as we have seen, it was in the twenties of the last century that Ashley operated in this region; and it was in 1825 that he made the Red Canyon journey. At the date which a 3 would make he was a Congressman, and he was never in the Far West again. Running on through Red Canyon with exhilarating velocity, but without any serious drawback, the party came out into the tranquil Brown's Hole, henceforth called Brown's Park. At the foot of this, without any preliminaries, they were literally swept into the heart of the mountains, for it is here that the river so suddenly rends the ma.s.sive formations in twain and speeds away toward the sea between wonderful precipices of red sandstone, churning itself to ivory in the headlong rush. This was named the Canyon of Lodore at the suggestion of one of the men. The work of safely proceeding down the torrent now grew far more difficult. Rapids were numerous and the descent in most of them very great. The boats had to be handled with extra caution. The method of travelling was for Powell to go ahead in the Emma Dean to examine the nature of each rapid before the other boats should come down to it. If he saw a clear chute he ran through and signalled "come on," but if he thought it too risky he signalled "land," and the place was examined as well as he was able from the sh.o.r.e. If this investigation showed a great many dangerous rocks, or any other dangerous element, a portage was made, or the boats were let down along the edge by lines without taking out the cargoes. In this careful way they were getting along very well, when one day they came to a particularly threatening place. Powell immediately perceived the danger, and, landing, signalled the other boats to do likewise. Unfortunately, the warning came too late for the No-Name, which was drawn into a sag, a sort of hollow lying just above the rapid, to clutch the unwary and drive them over the fall to certain destruction. Powell for a moment had given his attention to the last boat, and as he turned again and hurried along to discover the fortune of the No-Name, which was plunging down, without hope of escape, toward the frightful descent, he was just in time to see her strike a rock and, rebounding, careen so that the open compartment filled with water.

Sweeping on down now with railway speed, broadside on, she again struck a few yards below and was broken completely in two, the three men being tossed into the foaming flood. They were able to gain some support by clinging to the main part of the boat, which still held together.

Drifting on swiftly over a few hundred yards more to a second rapid full of large boulders, the doomed craft struck a third time and was entirely demolished, the men and the fragments being carried then out of sight.

Powell climbed as rapidly as possible over the huge fallen rocks, which here lie along the sh.o.r.e he was on, and presently he was able to get a view of his men. Goodman was in a whirlpool below a great rock; reaching this he clung to it. Howland had been washed upon a low rocky island, which at this stage of water was some feet above the current, and Seneca Howland also had gained this place. Howland extended a long pole to Goodman and by means of it pulled him to the island, where all were safe for the time being. Several hundred yards farther down, the river took another and more violent fall, rendering the situation exceedingly hazardous. A boat allowed to get a trifle too far towards this descent would be treated as the No-Name had been served higher up, and the expedition could not afford to lose a second boat with its contents. The water in these rapids beats furiously against the foot of the opposite vertical cliff, and if a boat in either place should by chance get too far over towards this right-hand wall it would be dashed to pieces there, even could it escape the rocks of the main channel. The problem was how to rescue the men from the island and not destroy another boat in doing it. Finally, the Emma Dean was brought down, and Jack Sumner undertook to reach the island in her. Keeping well up stream, as near the first fall as he could, a few bold strokes enabled him to land near the lower end. Then, all together, they pulled the boat to the very head of the island and beyond that as far as they could stand up in the water. Here one man sat on a rock and held the boat steady till the others were in perfect readiness to pull with all their power, when he gave a shove and, clinging on, climbed in while the oarsmen put their muscle to the test. The sh.o.r.e was safely attained, and Powell writes: "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." This disaster was most serious, even though the men were saved, for, besides the loss of the craft itself, all the barometers by some miscalculation were on the No-Name. They were able to make camp on the sh.o.r.e and survey the situation. "No sleep comes to me in all those dark hours," writes Powell. To meet with such a reverse at so early a stage was very discouraging, but Powell had counted on disaster, and, as he was never given to repining, as soon as breakfast was eaten the next morning he cast about for a way to rescue the barometers which were in a part of the wreck that had lodged among some rocks a half mile below. Sumner and Dunn volunteered to try to reach the place with the small boat, and they succeeded. When they returned, a loud cheer went up from those on sh.o.r.e, and Powell was much impressed with this exhibition of deep interest in the safety of the scientific instruments, but he soon discovered that the cheer was in celebration of the rescue of a three-gallon keg of whiskey that had been smuggled along without his knowledge and happened to be on the ill-fated No-Name.

It required a good deal of work to complete the portage around the double fall so that night again compelled them to camp near its spray, this time on a sand bank at the foot of the lower descent. Here, half buried in the gravel of the beach, some objects were discovered which revealed the fact that some other party had suffered a similar disastrous experience. These were an iron bake-oven, several tin plates, fragments of a boat, and other indications of a wreck at this place long years before. In his report, Powell ascribes this wreck to Ashley, but this is a mistake, for Ashley seems never to have entered this canyon, ending his voyage, as I have previously stated, when he reached Brown's Park. This wreckage then was from some other and later party. Powell also states that Ashley and one other survivor succeeded in reaching Salt Lake, where they were fed and clothed by the Mormons and employed on the Temple foundation until they had earned enough to enable them to leave the country. These men could not have been Ashley and a companion, for several reasons: one cited above; another that the Mormons had not yet settled at Salt Lake in Ashley's day; and a third, that Ashley was a wealthy and distinguished man, and would not have required pecuniary help. The disaster recorded by the bake-oven, etc., must then have occurred after 1847, the year the Mormons went into the Salt Lake Valley. Possibly it may have been the party mentioned by Farnham in 1839, though this would not be true if the men found Mormons at Salt Lake. An old mountaineer, named Baker, once told Powell of a party of men starting down the river and named Ashley as one, and this story, which referred undoubtedly to the real Ashley party, became confused with some other wherein the survivors probably did strike for Salt Lake and were helped by the Mormons.* At any rate, the rapids which had wrecked the earlier party and swallowed up the No-Name were appropriately called Disaster Falls.

*Should any reader have knowledge of the men who were wrecked in Lodore between the time of Ashley and Powell, the author would be glad to hear of it.

The river descends throughout Lodore with great rapidity and every day brought with it hard work and narrow escapes. Sometimes the danger was of a novel and unexpected character, as on June 16th, when the dry willows around camp caught fire. Powell had started for a climb of investigation and looking down on the camp he perceived a sudden tremendous activity without being able for some moments to discover the cause. So rapidly did the fire spread that there was no escape except by the boats. Some had their clothing burned and their hair singed, while Bradley even had his ears scorched. The cook in his haste stumbled with his arms full of culinary utensils, and the load disappeared beneath the waters, ever on the alert to swallow up man, boat, or beast. Just below the camp was a rapid and, casting off, they were forced to run this without stopping to examine it. No harm was done to the boats, and they landed at the first opportunity. When the fire had burned out they went back along the rocks to pick up what had been left behind and was unconsumed. On the same day, as the men were in the act of lowering a boat by lines, she broke away and started on an independent run.

Fortunately, she soon became entangled in an eddy, where she halted long enough to permit them to hurry down the small boat and recapture her.

Sometimes the channel was beset with innumerable great rocks, amidst which the river seethed and boiled in a manner sufficient to terrify any boatmen, but, luckily, they were able to work their way cautiously along, and without further disaster they came, on the 17th of June, to a place where the walls broke away and they emerged into a beautiful park-like widening of the canyon with bounding cliffs only about 600 feet high near the river. After the continuous cliffs of from 2000 to 2500 feet this place seemed like open country. Once more they camped in a quiet place at the mouth of a river entering through a deep canyon on the left or east side. It was the Yampa, sometimes called Bear River.

After a side trip of several hours up this canyon they started again on the descent and, skirting the smooth perpendicular wall which forms the west side of Echo Park, they turned a corner and found themselves in a new gorge, which, on account of many whirlpools existing at that stage of water, was called Whirlpool Canyon. The run through this was accomplished with great rapidity, as there were no serious obstacles, and in two days the expedition emerged into another expansion of the walls, where the tired men had a brief respite before they perceived the rocks, again closing in on the water.

Here a deer was brought in by one of the men, and, as they killed a mountain sheep farther up, they had not suffered for fresh meat. The entrance to the next canyon was very abrupt, and they were soon whirling along on a swift current. Though there were many rapids, landings were easy, and there was plenty of standing room everywhere, so that in two days they had the pleasure of pulling out of this Split Mountain Canyon into the Wonsits Valley, the longest opening in the whole line of canyons. Thus far, no Amerinds had been seen, not even signs of them, but here they found some tipi poles and the dead embers of a camp-fire, showing that other human beings besides themselves had traversed the lands now about them. Pus.h.i.+ng ahead over the sluggish waters of the river in this valley, they were not long in arriving at the mouth of the Uinta River, where Powell and two others walked out to the Ute Agency, about forty miles distant up the Uinta. One of the crew of the wrecked No-Name, Frank Goodman, here decided that he had seen all the canyons his education required and took his departure. This was not unwelcome to Powell, for the boats were still heavily loaded and the three men who had composed the crew of the wrecked boat were no longer actually required. Starting again, they arrived, not far below the mouth of the Uinta, at an island where a small crop had been planted by a "squaw-man,"* who had visited Powell's camp the previous winter. On that occasion he had disclosed his intention of tilling this place and invited Powell to help himself when he pa.s.sed there in his boats. The man was not at the farm, and nothing was ripe, but Hall suggested that potato-tops make good "greens." A quant.i.ty was therefore secured, and, at the noon stop, cooked and eaten, with the obvious result that all were violently sick. Luckily, the sickness was brief, and they were able to proceed by the middle of the afternoon. Often, the longing, by men living on bacon and beans, for something fresh in the vegetable line, leads to foolish experiments.

* A white man married to a squaw, and living with the tribe.

This Wonsits Valley soon came to an end and once more the rocks closed in, forming a canyon lacking the vegetation that had accompanied the cliffs along the river above. Because of this general barren appearance the gorge was called the Canyon of Desolation. On July 11th, they approached a rapid which seemed at first glance no more difficult to run than many they had successfully dashed through. The leading boat by Powell's direction pulled, into it, but this move was no sooner made than he perceived that at the bottom the river turned sharply to the left and the waters were piled against the foot of the cliff in an alarming manner. An effort was made to land, but as they had shortly before broken one oar and lost another, the two remaining were not sufficient to propel the boat with force enough to reach the desired point. At the same time, a huge wave striking the boat turned it instantly upside down and cast Powell some distance away. He succeeded in reaching her side, and there found Sumner and Dunn clinging. When quiet water was again entered they attempted to right the craft, and in doing this Dunn lost his hold and went under, though at the critical moment, as he came up, Sumner succeeded in grasping him and drawing him to the boat. By this time, they had drifted a long way down and saw another rapid approaching. By swimming desperately, they avoided being carried into this in their awkward plight, and, towing the boat after them, landed none too soon on a pile of driftwood on the bank. A gun, some barometers, and other articles that were in the open compartment, were lost, though one roll of blankets had been caught and saved by Powell as it drifted by. Building a large fire on the sh.o.r.e, they dried their clothing, while out of one of the logs they manufactured much-needed oars.

Fortified by these, they ran several bad rapids the following day. In one, Bradley was knocked overboard, but, his foot catching under the seat, he was dragged head down through the water till the worst of the fall was pa.s.sed, when one of the other men managed to haul him in. Just below this, they emerged again into an expansion of the walls, leaving the ninety-seven miles of Desolation behind. But another mile brought the rocks back once more, and the thirty-six miles of Gray Canyon must be pa.s.sed before they came to Gunnison Valley. Beyond this, walls of sandstone about one thousand feet high hemmed the river in for some sixty miles, but the stream was not dangerous and the party moved on quickly, though the absence of rapids and swift water made rowing obligatory. At the foot of this gorge, called from its winding character, Labyrinth Canyon, there was a brief expansion before the next walls closed upon them. These were closer than any seen above, but the river, though swift, had no dangerous element, so that progress was safe and easy, and in a trifle over forty miles they came to the mouth of a river almost as large as the Green, flowing in a canyon of similar depth and character. This was Grand River. At last they had reached the place where these two streams unite, thirteen hundred feet below the surrounding country; the mysterious Junction which, so far as the records go, Macomb and all white men before had failed to find.

Therefore when Powell and his band floated down till the waters of the Green mingled with those of the Grand they were perhaps the first white men ever to arrive at the spot. The Colorado proper was now before them.

It was the mystery of mysteries.

CHAPTER IX

A Canyon of Cataracts--The Imperial Chasm--Short Rations--A Split in the Party--Separation--Fate of the Howlands and Dunn--The Monster Vanquished.

Powell's winter of investigation had probably given him a good idea of what kind of rapids might be expected in the formations composing the canyons as far as the mouth of Grand River, but he now had confronting him water which for aught he could tell might indulge in plunges of a hundred feet or more at one time, between absolutely vertical walls.

And the aspect of the surroundings at the junction of the Green and the Grand is not rea.s.suring. It is a barren and dismal place, with no footing but a few sand-banks that are being constantly cut away and reformed by the whirling current, except on their higher levels where a few scrawny hackberry trees and weeds find room to continue a precarious existence. To get out of or into this locality either by climbing the cliffs or by navigating the rivers is a difficult feat, and to trust oneself to the current blindly rus.h.i.+ng down toward the sea is even worse, more especially so on the occasion of this first descent when all beyond was a complete blank. But the party faced the future bravely and cheerfully. They climbed out at two points on tours of inspection of the country above, while some took the opportunity to overhaul the supply of rations, which, having been so often wet, was seriously damaged.

The flour was musty and full of hard lumps. To eliminate the lumps, therefore, they screened it with a piece of mosquito netting for a sieve; at the same time they eliminated more than two hundred pounds of the precious freight and threw this away, a foolish proceeding, for by proper cooking it might have been utilised for food. Together with the losses by the wreck of the No-Name and other mishaps, and with what had been consumed, their food-supply was now reduced from the original ten-months' amount to a two-months' quant.i.ty, though they had not yet been on the way quite sixty days; that is, they had used up eight months' supplies in two months, including a mountain sheep and a deer the hunters had brought down, and they were barely more than half-way to the end of the journey. At this alarming rate they would be starving long before they saw the walls of the Grand Canyon break away.

Nevertheless no thought of pursuing any course but the one planned occurred to them, and on July 21st they cast off from the sand-banks and were carried rapidly down on the swift torrent of the Great Colorado.

They had not gone far before plenty hard work was furnished, in the shape of two portages were necessary to pa.s.s particularly dangerous places, and numerous bad rapids to run. In the afternoon the Emma Dean, in attempting to navigate one of the more favourable-looking foaming descents, was swamped, pitching Powell and the others headlong into the roaring flood. They were fortunately able to cling to the boat till they floated into more tranquil waters, where they managed to climb on board, signalling the other boats to land before the plunge. This they could do, and the boats were brought down by a portage, which took all the rest of the day. The approach of darkness compelled a halt for the night on some rocks where they had barely room enough to lie down. Three much-needed oars had been lost with the capsize of the Dean. These were sadly missed in the rough water that surrounded them the following day, so at the first large pile of driftwood they made a landing and secured a cottonwood log for oar-timber. While the oars were making, Powell and his brother climbed up to where some pinyon trees were seen growing, and collected a quant.i.ty of gum with which to calk the leaky boats.

They needed all the preparation possible, for the rapids now came ever thicker, ever faster, and more violent. The walls also grew in alt.i.tude from the thirteen hundred feet of the Junction to fifteen hundred feet, then to eighteen hundred feet, nearly vertical in places.

An examination of the barometric record was now made to see how much they had by this time descended toward sea-level, and, by comparison, about what might be expected in the river below. The conclusion was that though great descents were still ahead, if the fall should be distributed in rapids and short drops, as it had been above, and not concentrated great plunges, they would meet with success. But there in always remained the possibility of arriving on the brink of some high fall where no footing on either side could be obtained, and where a fierce current would prohibit a return. In such a case the exploration would have ended then and there. The newspapers before this time had printed a story of the expedition's collapse. The outer world supposed that Powell and all his men but one had been destroyed, though A. H.

Thompson wrote to the Chicago Inter-Ocean, which first published it, showing its absurdity. Mrs. Powell heard the story at her father's home in Detroit and she p.r.o.nounced it a fabrication, for she had received a letter subsequent to the date given for the destruction of the party.

She also had faith in her husband's judgment, caution, and good sense, so she refused to accept the tale at all, which was circulated by a man who had started from Green River Station, and who, by "pitching" this picturesque yarn, secured the sympathy and the purses of the pa.s.sengers on an east-bound Union Pacific train. He told how Powell and all the men but himself had been suddenly swallowed up in an awful place, dark and gloomy and full of fearful whirlpools, called Brown's Hole. From the sh.o.r.e, where he alone had remained, he had despairingly witnessed the party disappear in a mighty whirlpool never to rise again. But he made a mistake, so far as Mrs. Powell was concerned, in naming the spot. She knew very well that there was no danger whatever in Brown's Hole, and that the river in this pretty park was the quietest on the whole course.

But for its inventor the yarn had fulfilled its purpose, and he found himself east of the Mississippi, where he wanted to be, with a pocket full of dollars. A week or two after the story appeared letters were received from Powell via the Uinta Agency. These positively proved the falsity of the tale.

On the fourth day in Cataract Canyon three portages were compulsory at the very outset to pa.s.s safely over a stretch where the waters tumbled seventy-five feet in three quarters of a mile, and at the end of this three quarters of a mile they camped again, worn out by the severe toil.

Rapids now came with even greater frequency, between walls more than two thousand feet high and often nearly vertical from the water. On the 27th a flock of mountain sheep was discovered on the rocks not more than one hundred feet above their heads. The game did not see the hunters, who landed quickly in a convenient cove, and two fat sheep were added to the rapidly diminis.h.i.+ng larder. On the next day they were startled by the sudden closing in of the walls, till the canyon, now nearly three thousand feet deep, became very narrow, with the river filling the chasm from one blank cliff to the other. The water was also swift and the canyon winding, so that it was not possible to see ahead. Powell was much disturbed lest they should run upon some impa.s.sable fall, but luckily in about a mile and a half they emerged again into a more broken gorge without having had the least difficulty. He justly remarks that after it was done it seemed a simple thing to run through such a place, but the first doing of it was fraught with keen anxiety. In the late afternoon of this same day, they came to the end of the forty-one miles of Cataract Canyon, marked by a deep canyon-valley entering from the left at a sharp bend where millions of crags, pinnacles, and towers studded the summit of the right-hand wall, now again thirteen hundred feet high. It was called Millecrag Bend, either then, or on the second expedition. A new canyon immediately formed; a narrow, straight canyon, with walls terraced above and vertical below. The thirteen hundred feet of alt.i.tude speedily diminished and in nine miles the voyagers were at the end. Low walls again began, forming the head of the next canyon of the series. Presently they arrived at the mouth of a river flowing in from the right, or west. The pilot boat ran up into this stream, and as the water of the Colorado had been particularly muddy, the men were eager to discover clear, sparkling affluents and springs. One behind shouted, "How is she, Jack?" and Jack sententiously replied, "Oh, she's a dirty devil!" and by this t.i.tle the river was long called, and probably is still so known in that region, though on the maps it was afterwards changed by Powell to Fremont River, in honour of the Pathfinder.

They were now in the beginning of what has since been called Glen Canyon. Powell at first gave the name of Mound to the upper half, and Monument to the lower, but after 1871 Glen was subst.i.tuted for the whole. On July 31st they pa.s.sed the mouth of the San Juan, which enters through a canyon similar to that of the main river, about a thousand feet deep. They tried to climb out near this point, but failed to accomplish it. The next day they made camp in one of the peculiar alcoves or glens from which the canyon is named, worn by the waters into the h.o.m.ogeneous sandstone composing the walls. This particular glen is a beautiful spot. The wide entrance contains a number of cottonwood trees, and pa.s.sing these one finds himself in a huge cavern some five hundred feet wide and two hundred feet high, with a narrow slit leading up to the sky, and extending back far beyond the limits of the glen. The men found this a delightful place. They sang songs, and their voices sounded so well that they bestowed upon the cavern the name of Music Temple.

It now holds a special interest because three of them, O. G. Rowland, Seneca Howland, and William Dunn, carved their names on a smooth face of rock, and it forms their eternal monument, for these three never saw civilisation again.

For 149 miles the easy waters of Glen Canyon bore them along, and by August 4th they had pa.s.sed the Crossing of the Fathers, or Ute Ford, as it was called in that country before its identification as the point where Escalante crossed, and were at the mouth of the Paria, since 1873 better known as Lee's Ferry. They had now before them the grandest of all the gorges, though only two hundred feet deep at the beginning; but they had not proceeded far into it before the walls ran rapidly up while the river ran rapidly down. Numerous falls appeared, one following another in quick succession, necessitating portages and much hard work.

When Powell managed to climb out on the 7th, the walls had grown to twenty-three hundred feet. They soon increased to about thirty-five hundred feet, often vertical on one or the other side at the water, and even in the upper portions extremely precipitous. By the 10th they had reached the mouth of the Little Colorado, where White's imagination had pictured the greatest terror of the whole river, and the end of all the dangerous part. The walls of this tributary are, as is usually the case, the same as those of the main gorge, but the stream itself was small, muddy, and saline. Powell walked up it three or four miles, having no trouble in crossing it by wading when desirable. He called the new gorge now before him, really only a continuation of the one ending with the canyon of the Little Colorado, the "Great Unknown," and a party some twenty years later, emulating the early Spaniards in the art of forgetting, called it the same, but it was the Great Unknown only once, and that was when Powell on this occasion first faced the sublime, unfathomed depths that here lay in his course. Only one month's rations remained as a reliance in this terrible pa.s.sage. Powell says: "We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walk rise over the river, we know not.... The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is sombre and the jests are ghastly." With anxiety and much misgiving they drifted on between mile-high cliffs, rising terrace on terrace to the very sky itself. Even now, when the dangers are known and tested, no man lives who can enter the great chasm for a voyage to the other end without feeling anxiety as to the result, and the more anxiety he feels, the more probability there is that he will pa.s.s the barriers safely. Running rapids and pa.s.sing falls by portages and let-downs, they met no formidable obstacle till August 14th, when they ran into a granite formation, the "First Granite Gorge." While the gorge was wide above, it grew narrower as the river level was approached, till the walls were closer than anywhere farther up; and they were ragged and serrated. They had noticed that hard rocks had produced bad river, and soft rocks smooth water; now they were in a series of rocks harder than any before encountered. There was absolutely no way of telling what the waters might do in such a formation, which ran up till a thousand feet of it stood above their heads, supporting more than four thousand feet more of sedimentary rocks, making a grand total of between five thousand and six thousand feet. The same day on which they entered the granite they arrived, after running, and portaging around, several bad rapids, at a terrific fall, announced by a loud roar like the steady boom of Niagara, reverberating back and forth from wall to wall, and filling the whole gorge with its ominous note. The river was beaten to a solid sheet of reeling foam for a third of a mile. There was but one choice, but one path for the boats, and that lay through the midst of it, for on each side the waves pounded violently against the jagged cliffs which so closely hemmed them in. Men might climb up to the top of the granite and find their way around the obstruction, one thousand feet above it, descending again a mile or two down, but they could not take the boats over such a road. They must, therefore, run the place, a fall of about eighty feet in the third of a mile, or give up the descent. So they got into their boats and started on the smooth waters, so soon shattered into raging billows. Though filled with water, the boats all rode successfully and came out below crowned with success. Often a rapid is greatly augmented by enormous boulders which have been washed into the river from some side canyon, and, acting like a dam, block the water up and cause it to roar and fret tenfold more. Black and dismal is this granite gorge; sharp and terrible the rapids, whose sheeted foam becomes fairly iridescent by contrast. The method of working around some of the worst places is ill.u.s.trated well by the following extract:

"We land and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall. It seems possible to let down with lines, at least part of the way, from point to point, along the right-hand wall. So we make a portage over the first rocks, and find footing on some boulders below. Then we let down one of the boats to the end of her line, when she reaches a corner of the projecting rock, to which one of the men clings and steadies her, while I examine an eddy below. I think we can pa.s.s the other boats down by us, and catch them in the eddy. This is soon done and the men in the boats in the eddy pull us to their side. On the sh.o.r.e of this little eddy there is about two feet of gravel beach above water. Standing on this beach, some of the men take a line of the little boat and let it drift down against another projecting angle. Here is a little shelf on which a man from my boat climbs, and a shorter line is pa.s.sed to him, and he fastens the boat to the side of the cliff. Then the second one is let down, bringing the line of the third. When the second boat is tied up, the two men standing on the beach above spring into the last boat, which is pulled up alongside ours. Then we let down the boats, for twenty-five or thirty yards, by walking along the shelf, landing them again in the mouth of a side canyon. Just below this there is another pile of boulders, over which we make another portage. From the foot of these rocks we can climb to another shelf, forty or fifty feet above the water. On this bench we camp for the night. We find a few sticks, which have lodged in the rocks. It is raining hard, and we have no shelter, but kindle a fire and have our supper. We sit on the rocks all night, wrapped in our ponchos, getting what sleep we can."

At this season of the year there is a good deal of cloudy and rainy weather in the Grand Canyon region, and this makes the gorge decidedly gloomy when one is compelled to stay in it and descend the river. The next morning with two hours of similar manoeuvring the rapid was pa.s.sed.

The same day they found a stretch where the river was so swift the boats were tossed from side to side like feathers, entirely unmanageable. Here they met with another rapid and two of the boats were in such a position they could not escape running it. But they went through without damage.

Then the third crew tried to reach land, and succeeded, only to find that there was no foot-hold. They pushed out again, to be overwhelmed by a powerful wave which filled the boat full. She drifted helpless through several breakers and one of these capsized her. The men hung to the side, the only thing to do in the Colorado unless one has on a life preserver (and even then it is advisable), as she drifted down to the other boats, where she was caught and righted. It has always seemed strange to me that Powell on this crucial expedition did not provide himself and his men with cork life-jackets, a precaution that suggests itself immediately in such an undertaking. No one ought ever to attempt a descent without them.

The next day they reached a clear little stream coming in through a deep canyon on the right, and because they had honoured the devil by conferring his name on a river higher up, Powell concluded to honour the good spirits by calling this Bright Angel River. In its narrow valley ruined foundations of houses and fragments of pottery were discovered.

There were also indications of old trails by which the builders had made their way about. By the 17th of August, the rations were reduced to musty flour enough for ten days, a few dried apples, and plenty of coffee. The bacon had spoiled and was thrown away. Now the problem of food was a paramount consideration. Should they be detained by many bad places, they might be forced by the food question to abandon the river, if possible, and strike for the Mormon settlements lying to the north.

The barometers were rendered useless, so that they could not determine the alt.i.tude to see what proportion of descent still remained ahead.

They hoped, however, that the worst was behind. They now carefully divided evenly among the boats the little stock of flour, so that, in case of disaster, all of it should not be lost at once. Notwithstanding all the difficulties and the dark outlook, Powell never failed in his wonderful poise of mind and balance of nerve. But he was anxious, and he sang sometimes as they sailed along till the men, he once told me, he believed thought he had gone crazy. Of course the singing was more or less a mask for his real feelings.

On the 19th the pioneer boat, running some distance ahead of the others, was again upset by a wave. As usual the men succeeded in clinging to the upturned craft, the closed compartments always keeping the boat afloat, and were carried down through another rapid. The companion boats were detained by whirlpools and could not quickly go to the rescue, but when they finally did reach the Dean, she was bailed out, the men climbed on board of her again, and they all went on without even trying to land.

The next day, in one hour, they ran on a wild das.h.i.+ng river ten miles without stopping, and, what was to them most important, they ran out of the granite. The bright colours of the sedimentary rocks put new cheer into them. On they ran, down the narrow canyon, now about three thousand feet deep, always on swift water, but for a time there were no bad rapids. On August 25th they reached a fall where the river was once dammed up for a great height by an overflow of lava from craters on and near the brink. One of the craters was plainly visible from below. The canyon appeared to have been once filled by the lava to the depth of fifteen hundred feet. They named the descent Lava Falls and made a portage. Not far below this they found a garden which had been planted by the Shewits Pai Utes living on the plateau above. The corn was not ripe, though some squashes were, and helping themselves to a few of these they ran on to a comfortable place and had a feast.

So well did they now get on, running rapids and making fine time, that they began to look forward with great hope to a speedy termination of the canyon. When therefore the river took an unexpected turn towards the south and the lower formations once more began to appear, till the black granite, dreaded and feared, closed again threateningly about them, they were considerably disheartened. At the very beginning they were compelled to make a portage. Then they reached a place which appeared worse than anything they had yet seen. This was partly due to the condition of the men and it was partly a fact. They could discover no way to portage or to let down, and Powell believed running it meant certain destruction. They climbed up and along on the granite for a mile or two, but there appeared no hope for success. In trying to secure an advantageous position from which to view the fall Powell worked himself into a position where he could neither advance nor retreat. His situation was most precarious. The men were obliged to bring oars from the boats four hundred feet below, to brace into the rocks in order to get him safely back. The absence of his right arm made climbing sometimes very difficult for him. This was on the side opposite their first landing. Descending, they recrossed the river and spent the whole afternoon trying to decide on a plan. At last Powell reached a decision.

It was to lower the boats over the first portion, a fall of eighteen or twenty feet, then hug the right cliff to a point just above the second drop, where they could enter a little chute, and having pa.s.sed this point they were to pull directly across the stream to avoid a dangerous rock below. He told the men his intention of running the rapid the next morning, and they all crossed the river once more to a landing where it was possible to camp.

New and serious trouble now developed. The elder Howland remonstrated with Powell against proceeding farther by the river and advised the abandonment of the enterprise altogether. At any rate, he and his brother and William Dunn would not go on in the boats. Powell sat up that night plotting out his course and concluded from it that the mouth of the Virgen could not be more than forty-five miles away in a straight line. Calculating eighty or ninety miles by the river, and allowing for the open country he knew existed below the end of the Grand Canyon, he concluded that they must soon reach the mouth and be able to find the Mormon settlements about twenty miles up the Virgen River. Then he awoke Howland and explained the situation, and they talked it over. The substance of this talk is not stated, but Howland went to sleep again while Powell paced the sand till dawn, pondering on the best course to take. The immediate danger of the rapid he thought could be overcome with safety, but what was below? To climb out here, even were it possible, was to reach the edge of a desert with the nearest Mormon town not less than seventy-five miles distant, across an unknown country. So heavily did this situation weigh upon him that he almost concluded to abandon the river and try the chance on the top, but then he says: "For years I have been contemplating this trip. To leave the exploration unfinished, to say that there is a part of the canyon which I cannot explore, having already almost accomplished it, is more than I am willing to acknowledge, and I determine to go on." So he awoke Walter Powell and explained to him Howland's decision. Walter agreed to stand by him, and so did Sumner, Hawkins, Bradley, and Hall. The younger Howland wished to remain, but would not desert his brother. O. G.

Howland was determined to leave the river, and Dunn was with him.

I have never met any of the men of this party except Powell and his brother Walter, so I have no other account of the affair than the one just stated, which is from Powell's Report, and is the same that he gave me orally before that Report was printed. Walter Powell never mentioned the subject, or in any way suggested to me that there was anything behind the version of Powell. But others have. They have said that the real cause of the break was an incompatibility between Powell and the elder Howland. It is quite possible that Powell may have discovered Howland persona non grata, but had this been as serious as some have said, Howland would not have waited, it seems to me, till they came to a particularly bad-looking place to take his departure. At any rate, that was a long night for Powell, and whatever the main cause of Howland's leaving was, it was a trying ordeal for the leader. Howland's obligation certainly was to go on as if he were an enlisted soldier, and he evidently failed in this duty. When daylight finally came a solemn breakfast was prepared and eaten. No one had much heart. The river was then crossed again to the north side. The decision of the three men to leave rendered one boat useless, and the poorest, the Dean, which was a pine boat, was left behind. Two rifles and a shotgun were given to the men who were leaving, but their share of the rations they refused to take, being sure they could secure all the game they required. Their calculations were correct enough, and they would have arrived at the settlements had not an unforeseen circ.u.mstance prevented. When the river party were ready to start the three deserters helped lift the two boats over a high rock and down past the first fall. Then they parted. Powell wrote a letter to his wife which Howland took, Sumner gave him his watch with directions that it be sent to his sister in the event of the river party being annihilated, and the duplicate records of the trip were separated, one set being given to Howland, who at the last begged them not to go on down the river, a.s.suring them that a few miles more of such river as that now ahead of them would consume the last of the scant rations and then it would be too late to try to escape. In fact each party thought the other was taking the more desperate chance. By a mistake the duplicate records were wrongly divided, each party having portions of both sets. This afterwards made gaps in the river data below the Paria as far as Catastrophe Rapid. Powell entered the Maid of the Canyon and pulled away while the departing men stood on an overhanging crag looking on. Both boats succeeded in going through without accident, and it was then apparent that the place was not so bad as it looked and that they had run many that were worse. Down below it they waited for a couple of hours hoping the men would change their minds, take the Dean, and come on. But they were never seen again by white men. They climbed up the mighty cliffs to the summit of the Shewits Plateau, about fifty-five hundred feet, and that it is a hard climb I can testify, for I climbed down and back not far above this point. At length they were out of the canyon, and they must have rejoiced at leaving those gloomy depths behind. Northward they went, to a large water-pocket, a favourite camping-ground of the Shewits, a basin in the rocky channel of an intermittent stream, discharging into the Colorado. The only story of their fate was obtained from these Utes. Jacob Hamblin of Kanab learned it from some other Utes and afterwards got the story from them. They received the men at their camp and gave them food. During the night some of the band came in from the north and reported certain outrages by miners in that country. It was at once concluded that these whites were the culprits and that they never came down the Colorado as they claimed.

In the morning, therefore, a number secreted themselves near the edge of the water-pocket. The trail to the water leads down under a basaltic cliff perhaps thirty or forty feet high, as I remember the spot, which I visited about six years later. As the unfortunate men turned to come up from filling their canteens, they were shot down from ambush. In consequence I have called this the Ambush Water-pocket.* The guns, clothing, etc., were appropriated by the Shewits, and I believe it was through one of the watches that the facts first leaked out. I have always had a lurking suspicion that the Shewits were glad of an excuse (if they had one at the time) for killing the men. When I was there they were in an ugly mood and the night before I got to the camp my guide, a Uinkaret, and a good fellow, warned me to be constantly on my guard or they would steal all we had. There were three of us, and probably we were among the first whites to go there. Powell the autumn after the men were killed went to the Uinkaret Mountains, but did not continue over to the Shewits Plateau. Thompson went there in 1872.

*I have since been told that these men were killed near Mt.

Dellenbaugh, but my version is as I remember Jacob Hamblin's statement to me in 1872. He was the first to get the story.