First through the Grand Canyon

Front matter

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Introduction

The Colorado River of the West is formed in southeastern Utah by the junction of the Grand and Green rivers. For hundreds of miles it flows through a series of profound chasms, in many places from 4,000 to 6,000 feet deep, and rising nearly vertically for a considerable distance above the water. These canons are from one to fifteen miles wide at the top. The most famous of them is the Marble- Grand canon (really continuous, although it goes under two names, the Marble and the Grand) . Through this vast gorge the Colorado drops 2,330 feet in 283 miles, the current sometimes attaining a velocity of twenty-five miles an hour. The river itself varies in width from seventy-five feet to a quarter of a mile. In the narrowest places it has at times a depth of over 100 feet,

6 INTRODUCTION

Up to 1869 practically nothing was known of the Colorado River from its source to where it emerges into the valley of the Grand Wash, except what could be observed from look-out points at the tops of the canons, or from the few places where descents had been made to the bottom. It was a river of mystery and of fear. For long distances it was supposed to flow undergi^ound. There was no evidence that any human being had ever passed through the canons and come out alive. The Indians who lived in the neighborhood considered such a feat preposterous.

Then came a scientist and a man of nerve. Major John Wesley Powell, who studied the river carefully at several points along its bank, and calmly decided to risk his life in clearing up the mystery by navigating the stream clear through to the Wash.

The undertaking was all the more remarkable from the fact that Powell had only one arm. He had lost his right arm

INTRODUCTION 7

in the battle of Shiloh. His plucky young wife, to whom he had been married but a month, was present at headquarters when he was wounded, and promptly offered herself as a substitute for the missing limb so that her husband could continue in service. She then and there enhsted, and General Grant gave her a "perpetual pass" to follow the army in the capacity she had chosen. With this help Major Powell continued in active service to the close of the war.

In his student days Powell had made a specialty of what was then called "natural history." When the war was over he accepted a professorship of geology in the Illinois Wesleyan University, and later held a similar chair in the Illinois Normal University. In the summer of 1867 he initiated the practice of student field work by taking his class to the mountains of Colorado for geological exploration. It was on this trip that he formed the idea of exploring the canons of the Colorado River of the West.

8 INTRODUCTION

Having obtained funds from public institutions of Illinois to outfit his little expedition, he started from Green River City, above the head of the Colorado proper. May 24, 1869, on one of the most hazardous adventures in the history of exploration. He emerged from the Grand Canon on August 29, with five of the nine men he had started with. Four had deserted on the way, and three of these were killed by Indians.

Major Powell's report on this first exploration of the Colorado River was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1875. Together with the scientific data appended, it forms a large quarto volume, which is now out of print. The narrative part is here republished without abridgement.

In 1870, Congress established a Topographical and Geological Survey of the Colorado River of the West, and Powell was placed in charge of it. In 1871-1872 he made a second descent of the river, this time for the government. Again he came through

INTRODUCTION 9

unharmed, proving his mastery of a species of navigation so difficult that many who have tried it in later years have perished in those brawling waters.

Much of Powell's attention was given to American ethnology, and when a Bureau of Ethnology was formed by the government, he was appointed its director. In 1881 he succeeded Clarence King as director of the U. S. Geological Survey. Major Powell died September 23, 1902.

Horace Kephart.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I The Valley of the Colorado . . . 15

II From Green River City to Flaming

Chapter I

THE Colorado River is formed by the junction of the Grand and Green.

The Grand River has its source in the Rocky Mountains, five or six miles west of Long's Peak, in latitude 40° 17' and longitude lOS"" 43' approximately. A group of little alpine lakes, that receive their waters directly from perpetual snow-banks, discharge into a common reservoir, known as Grand Lake, a beautiful sheet of water. Its quiet surface reflects towering cliffs and crags of granite on its eastern shore; and stately pines and firs stand on its western margin.

The Green River heads near Fremont's Peak, in the Wind River Mountains, in latitude 43° 15' and longitude 109° 45', approximately. This river, like the last, has its sources in alpine lakes, fed by everlasting snows. Thousands of these little lakes, with deep, cold, emerald waters, are embosomed among the crags of the Rocky Mountains. These streams, born in the cold, gloomy solitudes of the upper mountain region, have a strange, eventful history as they pass down through gorges, tumbling in cascades and cataracts, until they reach the hot, arid plains of the Lower Colorado, where the waters that were so clear above empty as turbid floods into the Gulf of California.

The mouth of the Colorado is in latitude Sr 53' and longitude 115°.

The Green River is larger than the Grand, and is the upper continuation of the Colorado. Including this river, the whole length of the stream is about two thousand miles. The region of country drained by the Colorado and its tributaries is about eight hundred miles in length, and varies from three hundred to five hundred in width.

containing about three hundred thousand square miles, an area larger than all the New England and Middle States, and Maryland and Virginia added, or as large as Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri.

There are two distinct portions of the basin of the Colorado. The lower third is but little above the level of the sea, though here and there ranges of mountains rise to an altitude of from two to six thousand feet. This part of the valley is bounded on the north by a line of cliffs, that present a bold, often vertical step, hundreds or thousands of feet to the table-lands above.

The upper two-thirds of the basin rises from four to eight thousand feet above the level of the sea. This high region, on the east, north, and west, is set with ranges of snow-clad mountains, attaining an altitude above the sea varying from eight to fourteen thousand feet. All winter long, on its mountain-crested rim, snow falls, filling the gorges, half burying the forests, and covering the crags and peaks with a mantle woven by the winds from the waves of the sea — a mantle of snow. Wlien the summer-sun comes, this snow melts, and tumbles down the mountain-sides in millions of cascades. Ten million cascade brooks unite to form ten thousand torrent creeks; ten thousand torrent creeks unite to form a hundred rivers beset with cataracts; a hundred roaring rivers unite to form the Colorado, which rolls, a mad, turbid stream, into the Gulf of California.

Consider the action of one of these streams: its source in the mountains, where the snows fall; its course through the arid plains. Now, if at the river's flood storms were falling on the plains, its channel would be cut but little faster than the adjacent country would be washed, and the general level would thus be preserved; but, under the conditions here mentioned, the river deepens its bed, as there is much through corrosion and but little lateral degradation.

So all the streams cut deeper and still deeper until their banks are towering cliffs of solid rock. These deep, narrow gorges are called canons.

For more than a thousand miles along its course, the Colorado has cut for itself such a canon; but at some few points, where lateral streams join it, the canon is broken, and narrow, transverse valleys divide it properly into a series of canons.

The Virgen, Kanab, Paria, Escalante, Dirty Devil, San Rafael, Price, and Uinta on the west, the Grand, Yampa, San Juan, and Colorado Chiquito on the east, have also cut for themselves such narrow, winding gorges, or deep canons. Every river entering these has cut another canon; every lateral creek has cut a canon ; every brook runs in a canon; every rill born of a shower, and born again of a shower, and living only during these showers, has cut for itself a canon ; so that the whole upper portion of the basin of the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these deep gorges.

Owing to a great variety of geological conditions, these canons differ much in general aspect. The Rio Virgen, between Long Valley and the Mormon town of Schunesburgh, runs through Pa-ru'-nu-weap Canon, often not more than twenty or thirty feet in width, and from six hundred to one thousand five hundred feet deep.

Away to the north, the Yampa empties into the Green by a canon that I essayed to cross in the fall of 1868, and was baffled from day to day until the fourth had nearly passed before I could find my way down to the river. But thirty miles above its mouth, this canon ends, and a narrow valley, with a flood-plain, is found. Still farther up the stream, the river comes down through another canon, and beyond that a narrow valley is found, and its upper course is now through a canon and now a valley.

All these canons are alike changeable in their topographic characteristics.

The longest canon through which the Colorado runs is that between the mouth of the Colorado Chiquito and the Grand Wash, a distance of two hundred and seventeen and a half miles. But this is separated from another above, sixty-five and a half miles in length, only by the narrow canon-valley of the Colorado Chiquito.

All the scenic features of this canon land are on a giant scale, strange and weird. The streams run at depths almost inaccessible; lashing the rocks which beset their channels ; rolling in rapids, and plunging in falls, and making a wild music which but adds to the gloom of the solitude.

The little valleys nestling along the streams are diversified by bordering willows, clumps of box-elder, and small groves of Cottonwood.

Low mesas, dry and treeless, stretch back from the brink of the canon, often showing smooth surfaces of naked, solid rock. In some places, the country rock being composed of marls, the surface is a bed of loose, disintegrated material, and you walk through it as in a bed of ashes. Often these marls are richly colored and variegated. In other places, the country rock is a loose sandstone, the disintegration of which has left broad stretches of drifting sand, white, golden, and vermilion.

Where this sandstone is a conglomerate, a paving of pebbles has been left, a mosaic of many colors, polished by the drifting sands, and glistening in the sunlight.

After the canons, the most remarkable features of the country are the long lines of cliffs. These are bold escarpments, often hundreds or thousands of feet in altitude, great geographic steps, scores or hundreds of miles in length, presenting steep faces of rock, often quite vertical.

Having climbed one of these steps, you may descend by a gentle, sometimes imperceptible, slope to the foot of another. They will thus present a series of terraces, the steps of which are well-defined escarpments of rock. The lateral extension of such a line of cliffs is usually very irregular ; sharp salients are projected on the plains below.

and deep recesses are cut into the terraces above.

Intermittent streams coming down the cliffs have cut many canons or canon valleys, by which the traveler may pass from the plain below to the terrace above. By these gigantic stairways, you may ascend to high plateaus, covered with forests of pine and fir.

The region is further diversified by short ranges of eruptive mountains. A vast system of fissures — huge cracks in the rocks to the depths below — extends across the country. From these crevices, floods of lava have poured, covering mesas and table-lands with sheets of black basalt. The expiring energies of these volcanic agencies have piled up huge cinder-cones, that stand along the fissures, red, brown, and black, naked of vegetation, and conspicuous landmarks, set, as they are, in contrast to the bright, variegated rocks of sedimentary origin.

These canon gorges, obstructing clifiPs and desert wastes, have prevented the traveler from penetrating the country, so that, until the Colorado River Exploring Expedition was organized, it was almost unknown* Yet enough had been seen to foment rumor, and many wonderful stories have been told in the hunter's cabin and prospector's camp. Stories were related of parties entering the gorge in boats, and being carried down with fearful velocity into whirlpools, where all were overwhelmed in the abyss of waters; others, of underground passages for the great river, into which boats had passed never to be seen again. It was currently believed that the river was lost under the rocks for several hundred miles. There were other accounts of great falls, whose roaring music could be heard on the distant mountain-summits. There were many stories current of parties wandering on the brink of the canon, vainly endeavoring to reach the waters below, and perishing with thirst at last in sight of the river which was roaring its mockery into dying ears.

The Indians, too, have woven the mysteries of the canons into the myths of their rehgion. Long ago, there was a great and wise chief, who mourned the death of his wife, and would not be comforted until Ta-vwoats, one of the Indian gods, came to him, and told him she was in a happier land, and offered to take him there, that he might see for himself, if, upon his return, he would cease to mourn. The great chief promised. Then Ta-vwoats made a trail through the mountains that intervene between that beautiful land and this, the desert home of the poor Nu'-ma.

This trail was the canon gorge of the Colorado. Through it he led him; and, when they had returned, the deity exacted from the chief a promise that he would tell no one of the joys of that land, lest, through discontent with the circumstances of this world, they should desire to go to heaven. Then he rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should engulf any that might attempt to enter thereby.

More than once have I been warned by the Indians not to enter this canon. They considered it disobedience to the gods and contempt for their authority, and believed that it would surely bring upon me their wrath.

For two years previous to the exploration, I had been making some geological studies among the heads of the canons leading to the Colorado, and a desire to explore the Grand Canon itself grew upon me. Early in the spring of 1869, a small party was organized for this purpose. Boats were built in Chicago, and transported by rail to the point where the Union Pacific Railroad crosses the Green River. With these we were to descend the Green into the Colorado, and the Colorado down to the foot of the Grand Canon,

Chapter II From Green Riyer City To Flaming Gorge

MAY 24, 1869.— The good people of Green River City turn out to see us start. We raise our little flag, push the boats from shore, and the swift current carries us down.

Our boats are four in number. Three are built of oak; stanch and firm; doubleribbed, with double stem and stern posts, and further strengthened by bulkheads, dividing each into three compartments.

Two of these, the fore and aft, are decked, forming water-tight cabins. It is expected these will buoy the boats should the waves roll over them in rough water. The little vessels are twenty-one feet long, and, taking out the cargoes, can be carried by four men. The fourth boat is made of pine, very light, but sixteen feet in length, with a sharp cut-water, and every way built for fast rowing, and divided into compartments as the others.

We take with us rations deemed sufficient to last ten months ; for we expect, when winter comes on and the river is filled with ice, to lie over at some point until spring arrives ; so we take with us abundant supplies of clothing. We have also a large quantity of ammunition and two or three dozen traps. For the purpose of building cabins, repairing boats, and meeting other exigencies, we are supplied with axes, hammers, saws, augers, and other tools, and a quantity of nails and screws. For scientific work, we have two sextants, four chronometers, a number of barometers, thermometers, compasses, and other instruments.

The flour is divided into three equal parts ; the meat and all other articles of our rations in the same way. Each of the larger boats has an ax, hammer, saw, auger, and other tools, so that all are loaded alike. We dis-

GREEN RIVER CITY 29

tribute the cargoes in this way, that we may not be entirely destitute of some important article should any one of the boats be lost. In the small boat, we pack a part of the scientific instruments, three guns, and three small bundles of clothing only. In this, I proceed in advance, to explore the channel.

J. C. Sumner and William H. Dunn are my boatmen in the Emma Dean; * then follows Kitty Clyde's Sister, manned by W. H. Powell** and G. Y. Bradley; next, the No Name, with O. G. Howland, Seneca Howland, and Frank Gopdman ; and last comes the Maid of the Canon, with W. R. Hawkins and Andrew Hall.

Our boats are heavily loaded, and only with the utmost care is it possible to float in the rough river without shipping water.

A mile or two below town, we run on a sand-bar. The men jump into the stream, and thus lighten the vessels, so that they

* Mrs. Powell's maiden name. {Ed.)

**Capt. Walter Powell, the Major's youngest brother. Besides the two Powells, Sumner, Bradley, and Hawkins were ex-soldiers. (Ed.)

so FIRST THROUGH GRAND CANYON

drift over; and on we go. In trying to avoid a rock, an oar is broken on one of the boats, and, thus crippled, she strikes. The current is swift, and she is sent reehng and rocking into the eddy. In the confusion, two others are lost overboard and the men seem quite discomfited, much to the amusement of the other members of the party.

. Catching the oars and starting again, the boats are once more borne down the stream until we land at a small cottonwood grove on the bank, and camp for noon.

During the afternoon, we run down to a point where the river sweeps the foot of an overhanging cliff, and here we camp for the night. The sun is yet two hours high, so I climb the cliffs, and walk back among the strangely carved rocks of the Green Hiver bad-lands. These are sandstones and shales, gray and buff, red and brown, blue and black strata in many alternations, lying nearly horizontal, and almost without soil and vegetation. They are very friable, and

GREEN RIVER CITY 31

the rain and streams have carved them into quaint shapes. Barren desolation is stretched before me; and yet there is a beauty in the scene. The fantastic carving, imitating architectural forms, and suggesting rude but weird statuary, with the bright and varied colors of the rocks, conspire to make a scene such as the dweller in verdure-clad hills can scarcely appreciate.

Standing on a high point, 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 somber green; and rosy clouds playing around the borders of huge, black masses; and heights and clouds, and mountains and snow-fields, and forests and rock-lands, are blended into one grand view. Now the sun goes down, and I return to camp.

Ma7/ 25. — We start early this morning, and run along at a good rate until about nine o'clock, when we are brought up on a gravelly bar. All jump out, and help the boats over by main strength. Then a rain comes on, and river and clouds conspire to give us a thorough drenching. Wet, chilled, and tired to exhaustion, we stop at a cottonwood grove on the bank, build a huge fire, make a cup of coffee, and are soon refreshed and quite merry. When the clouds ''get out of our sunshine," we start again. A few miles farther down, a flock of mountain-sheep are seen on a cliff to the right. The boats are quietly tied up, and three or four men go after them. In the course of two or three hours, they return. The cook has been successful in bringing down a fat lamb. The unsuccessful hunters taunt him with finding it dead; but it is soon dressed, cooked, and eaten, making a fine four o'clock dinner.

GREEN RIVER CITY 3S

"All aboard," and down the river for another dozen miles. On the way, we pass the mouth of Black's Fork, a dirty little stream that seems somewhat swollen. Just below its mouth, we land and camp.

May 26. — To-daj^ we pass several curiously-shaped buttes, standing between the west bank of the river and the high bluffs beyond. These buttes are outliers of the same beds of rocks exposed on the faces of the bluffs ; thinly laminated shales and sandstones of many colors, standing above in vertical cliffs, and buttressed below with a water-carved talus; some of them attain an altitude of nearly a thousand feet above the level of the river.

We glide quietly down the placid stream past the carved cliffs of the mauvaises terres, now and then obtaining glimpses of distant mountains. Occasionally, deer are started from the glades among the willows ; and several wild geese, after a chase through the water, are shot.

After dinner, we pass through a short.

narrow canon into a broad valley ; from this, long, lateral valleys stretch back on either side as far as the eye can reach.

Two or three miles below, Henry's Fork enters from the right. We land a short distance above the junction, where a cache of instruments and rations was made several months ago, in a cave at the foot of the cliff, a distance back from the river. Here it was safe from the elements and wild beasts, but not from man. Some anxiety is felt, as we have learned that a party of Indians have been camped near it for several weeks. Our fears are soon allayed, for we find it all right. Our chronometer wheels are not taken for hair ornaments; our barometer tubes, for beads; nor the sextant thrown into the river as "bad medicine," as had been predicted.

Taking up our cache, we pass down to the foot of the Uinta Mountains, and, in a cold storm, go into camp.

The river is running to the south; the mountains have an easterly and westerly trend directly athwart its course, yet it glides

GREEN RIVER CITY 35

on in a quiet way as if it thought a mountain range no formidable obstruction to its course. It enters the range by a flaring, brilliant, red gorge, that may be seen from the north a score of miles away.

The great mass of the mountain-ridge through which the gorge is cut is composed of bright vermilion rocks; but they are surmounted by broad bands of mottled buff and gray, and these bands come down with a gentle curve to the water's edge on the nearer slope of the mountain.

This is the head of the first canon we are about to explore — an introductory one to a series made by the river through this range. We name it Flaming Gorge. The cliffs or walls we find, on measurement, to be about one thousand two hundred feet high.

May 27. — To-day it rains, and we employ the time in repairing one of our barometers, which was broken on the way from New York. A new tube has to be put in ; that is, a long glass tube has to be filled with mercury four or five inches at a time, and each installment boiled over a spirit-lamp. It is a delicate task to do this without breaking the glass ; but we have success, and are ready to measure the mountains once more.

May 28. — To-day we go to the summit of the cliff on the left and take observations for altitude, and are variously employed in topographic and geological work.

May 29 — This morning, Bradley and I cross the river, and climb more than a thousand feet to a point where we can see the stream sweeping in a long, beautiful curve through the gorge below. Turning and looking to the west, we can see the valley of Henry's Fork, through which, for many miles, the little river flows in a tortuous channel. Cottonwood groves are planted here and there along its course, and between them are stretches of grass land. The narrow mountain valley is inclosed on either side by sloping walls of naked rock of many bright colors. To the south of the valley are the Uintas, and the peaks of the Wasatch Mountains can be faintly seen in the far west. To

GREEN RIVER CITY 37

the north, desert plains, dotted here and there with curiously carved hills and buttes, extend to the limit of vision.

For many years, this valley has been the home of a number of mountaineers, who were originally hunters and trappers, living with the Indians. Most of them have one or more Indian wives. They no longer roam with the nomadic tribes in pursuit of buckskin or beaver, but have accumulated herds of cattle and horses, and consider themselves quite well-to-do. Some of them have built cabins ; others still live in lodges.

John Baker is one of the most famous of these men; and, from our point of view, we can see his lodge tliree or four miles up the river.

The distance frorti Green Kiver City to Flaming Gorge is sixty-two miles. The river runs between bluffs, in some places standing so close to each other that no flood-plain is seen. At such a point, the river might properly be said to run through a canon. The bad-lands on either side are interrupted here and there by patches of Artemesia^ or sage-brush. Where there is a flood-plain along either side of the river, a few cottonwoods may be seen.

Chapter III From Flaming Gorge To The Gate Of Lodore

YOU must not think of a mountainrange as a line of peaks standing on a plain, but as a broad platform many miles wide, from which mountains have been carved by the waters. You must conceive, too, that this plateau is cut by gulches and canons in many directions, and that beautiful valleys are scattered about at different altitudes. The first series of canons we are about to explore constitutes a river channel through such a range of mountains. The canon is cut nearly half-way through the range, then turns to the east, and is cut along the central line, or axis, gradually crossing it to the south. Keeping this direction for more than fifty miles, it then turns abruptly to a southwest course, and goes diagonally through the southern slope of the range.

This much we knew before entering, as we made a partial exploration of the region last fall, climbing many of its peaks, and in a few places reaching the brink of the canon walls, and looking over the precipices, many hundi^eds of feet high, to the water below.

Here and there the walls are broken by lateral canons, the channels of little streams entering the river; through two or three of these, we found our way down to the Green in early winter, and walked along the low water-beach at the foot of the cliffs for several miles. Where the river has this general easterly direction, the western part only has cut for itself a canon, while the eastern has formed a broad valley, called, in honor of an old-time trapper, Brown's Park, and long known as a favorite winter resort for mountain men and Indians.

May 30. — This morning we are ready to enter the mysterious canon, and start with some anxiety. The old mountaineers tell us that it cannot be run; the Indians say, "Water heap catch 'em," but all are eager for the trial, and off we go.

Entering Flaming Gorge, we quickly run through it on a swift current, and emerge into a little park. Half a mile below, the river wheels sharply to the left, and we turn into another canon cut into the mountain. We enter the narrow passage. On either side, the walls rapidly increase in altitude. On the left are overhanging ledges and cliffs five hundred — a thousand — fifteen hundred feet high.