Member of the United States Colorado River Expedition of 1871 and 1872 “No sluggish tide congenial to the glooms: This, as it frothed by, might have been a bath For the fiend’s glowing hoof——”                     Browning To my friends and comrades of the Colorado River Expedition of 1871 and 1872 in grateful remembrance. Looking up the Bright Angel Trail. This is one of the modern trails into the Grand Canyon, which at this point is some 6000 feet deep. From water-color sketch by Thomas Moran,

I have endeavoured to present the history of the river, and immediate environment, so far as I have been able to learn it, but within the limits of a single volume of this size much must necessarily be omitted. Reference to the admirable works of Powell, Gilbert, and Button will give the reader full information concerning the geology and topography; Garces , by Elliott Coues, gives the story of the friars; and the excellent memoir of Chittenden, The American Fur Trade of the Far West , will give

1884-5—By rail to Ft. Wingate, New Mexico. By rail to Flagstaff. To Flagstaff via circuit of, and summit of, San Francisco Mountain and the Turkey Tanks. By rail to the Needles, California. By rail to Manuelito, New Mexico. To Ft. Defiance. By buckboard to Keam’s Canyon. To the East Mesa of the Moki. To Keam’s Canyon. By buckboard via Pueblo, Colorado, to Ft. Defiance. To the San Juan River at the “Four Corners,” via Lukachukai Pass and the summit of the Carisso Mountains. To Ft. Defiance via th

The Secret of the Gulf—Ulloa, 1539, One of the Captains of Cortes, Almost Solves it, but Turns Back without Discovering—Alarçon, 1540, Conquers. In every country the great, rivers have presented attractive pathways for interior exploration—gateways for settlement. Eventually they have grown to be highroads where the rich cargoes of development, profiting by favouring tides, floated to the outer world. Man, during all his wanderings in the struggle for subsistence, has universally found them his

Gradually, intercourse increased, and presents of trinkets seemed to incline all the natives in Alarçon’s favour. At length he discovered that they reverenced the sun, and without compunction he proclaimed that he came from that orb. This deception served him well. Henceforth no service was too great for the natives to perform for these sacred beings. Everything was placed at their disposal. Alarçon’s word was their law. They relieved the men entirely of the wearisome task of towing the boats, s

[2] Ray Stannard Baker, Century Magazine , May, 1902. The Work of Erosion. The Witch of Endor and Cerberus. Photograph by J.K. H ILLERS , U.S. Geol. Survey. The Work of Corrasion. Paranuweap Canyon of the Virgen River, Southern Utah. 20 to 30 feet wide and 1500 feet deep and 18 miles long. Photograph by J.K. H ILLERS , U.S. Geol. Survey. 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

Oñate, 1604, Crosses Arizona to the Colorado—A Remarkable Ancient Ruin Discovered by Padre Kino, 1694—Padre Garces Sees the Grand Canyon and Visits Oraibi, 1776—The Great Entrada of Padre Escalante across Green River to Utah Lake, 1776—Death of Garces Ends the Entrada Period, 1781. In the historical development of the Basin of the Colorado four, chief epochs are apparent. The discovery of the river, as already outlined in previous chapters, is the first; second, the entradas of the padres; third

Breaking the Wilderness—Wanderings of the Trappers and Fur Traders—General Ashley in Green River Valley, 1824—Pattie along the Grand Canyon, 1826—Lieut. Hardy, R.N., in a Schooner on the Lower Colorado, 1826—Jedediah Smith, Salt Lake to San Gabriel, 1826—Pattie on the Lower Colorado in Canoes, 1827-28. As the “sweet Afton” of old gently flowing among its green braes compares with the fierce Colorado, so do those earnest padres who so faithfully tried to plant their cross in the waste places, as

Frémont, the Pathfinder—Ownership of the Colorado—The Road of the Gold Seekers—First United States Military Post, 1849—Steam Navigation—Captain Johnson Goes to the Head of Black Canyon. The great Western wilderness was now no longer “unknown” to white men. By the year 1840 the American had traversed it throughout, excepting the canyons of the Colorado, which yet remained, at least below the mouth of Grand River, almost as much of a problem as before the fur trade was born. Like some antediluvian

Lieutenant Ives Explores to Fortification Rock—By Trail to Diamond Creek, Havasupai Canyon, and the Moki Towns—Macomb Fails in an Attempt to Reach the Mouth of Grand River—James White’s Masterful Fabrication. Steam navigation on the Colorado was now successfully established, and when Lieutenant Ives was planning the exploration of the river there were already upon it two powerful steamers exactly adapted, through experience of previous disasters, to the peculiar dangers of these waters, while Jo

The One-armed Knight—A Bold Attack on the Canyons—Powell and His Men—The Wonderful Voyage—Mighty Walls and Roaring Rapids—Capsizes and Catastrophes. When the Civil War was finally over, the wilds of the Far West again called in seductive voice to the adventurous and the scientific. The fur-trade as an absorbing industry was dead, but mining, prospecting, ranching, and scientific exploring took its place. Among the naturalists who crossed the Rocky Mountains for purposes of investigation, fascina

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

Powell’s Second Attack on the Colorado—Green River City—Red Canyon and a Capsize—The Grave of Hook—The Gate of Lodore—Cliff of the Harp—Triplet Falls and Hell’s Half-Mile—A Rest in Echo Park. Though Powell had demonstrated the possibility of passing alive through the thousand-mile stretch of canyons on the Green and Colorado, the scientific results of his hazardous voyage were not what he had desired. Owing to the numerous disasters many of the instruments had been lost, and he had been prevente

An Island Park and a Split Mountain—The White River Runaways—Powell Goes to Salt Lake—Failure to Get Rations to the Dirty Devil—On the Rocks in Desolation—Natural Windows—An Ancient House—On the Back of the Dragon at Last—Cataracts and Cataracts in the Wonderful Cataract Canyon—A Lost Pack-Train—Naming the Echo Peaks. With one of the boats from the camp in Echo Park Powell went up the Yampa to see what might be there. Though this stream was tranquil at its mouth, it proved to be rough farther up

Into the Jaws of the Dragon—A Useless Experiment—Wheeler Reaches Diamond Creek Going Up-stream—The Hurricane Ledge—Something about Names—A Trip from Kanab through Unknown Country to the Mouth of the Dirty Devil. While our party, in September, was battling with the cataracts, another, as we afterwards learned, was starting from Camp Mohave on a perilous, impracticable, and needless expedition up the Colorado. How far this party originally expected to be able to proceed against the tremendous obst

A Canyon through Marble—Multitudinous Rapids—Running the Sockdologer—A Difficult Portage, Rising Water, and a Trap—The Dean Upside Down—A Close Shave—Whirlpools and Fountains—The Kanab Canyon and the End of the Voyage. By referring to the relief map opposite page 41, the mouth of the Paria is seen a trifle more than half-way up the right-hand side. The walls of Glen Canyon here recede from the river and become on the south the Echo Cliffs, taking the name from the Echo Peaks which form their beg

A Railway Proposed through the Canyons—The Brown Party, 1889, Undertakes the Survey—Frail Boats and Disasters—The Dragon Claims Three—Collapse of the Expedition—Stanton Tries the Feat Again, 1889-90—A Fall and a Broken Leg—Success of Stanton—The Dragon Still Untrammelled. The topographic, geologic, and geodetic work of the survey did not cease with our departure from the river, but was continued in the remarkable country shown in the relief map opposite page 41, till the relationships and distan

Major Powell had kindly consented to write an introduction to this volume wherein I have inadequately presented scenes from the great world-drama connected with the Colorado River of the West, but a prolonged illness prevented his doing any writing whatever, and on September 23, 1902, while, indeed, the compositor was setting the last type of the book, a funeral knell sounded at Haven, Maine, his summer home, and the most conspicuous figure we have seen on this stage, the man whose name is as in

In the Marble and Grand Canyons the fall is as follows. [1] The vertical dotted lines of diagram on page 57 give these divisions, beginning at the left with 2. [1] After Dutton, Tertiary History , p. 240. The exact number of rapids cannot be given, as in some portions of Lodore, Cataract, Marble, and the Grand Canyon it is difficult to divide the almost continuous fall into parts. The number also varies with the stage of water, a high stage covering up some of the smaller rapids. I count 62 rapi