A Canyon of Cataracts—The Imperial Chasm—Short Rations—A Split in the Party—Separation—Fate of the Howlands and Dunn—The Monster Vanquished.
Junction of the Grand and Green.
On the surface; bare rock. Photograph by E. O. Beaman,
U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
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 reassuring. 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 rushing 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’ quantity, 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.
In Cataract Canyon.
Highest walls in this canyon 2700 feet.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
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 pass 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 quantity 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 altitude 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 pronounced 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 passengers 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 shore, 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.
The crags at Millecrag Bend, foot of Cataract Canyon.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
On the fourth day in Cataract Canyon three portages were compulsory at the very outset to pass 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 diminishing 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 impassable 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 altitude 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 title 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 Frémont River, in honour of the Pathfinder.
The Music Temple Alcove, Glen Canyon.
So called because the men of Powell’s first expedition sang in the place. On entering one finds a huge cavern. Here the men who were latter killed by tghe Shewits carved their names.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
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 substituted for the whole. On July 31st they passed 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 homogeneous sandstone composing the walls. This particular glen is a beautiful spot. The wide entrance contains a number of cottonwood trees, and passing 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 passed 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 l0th 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,
The Depths of the Grand Canyon at Sunset.
Studio painting by F. S. Dellenbaugh, in the possession of Prof. A. H. Thompson, who considers it the best representation of the canyon from below that he has seen, “the truest—far better than any photograph because more comprehensive.” |
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 passage. 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 pass the barriers safely. Running rapids and passing 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 illustrated well by the following extract:
The Grand Canyon. The “Sockdologer” Rapid.Fall fo about eighty feet in one third of a mile.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp.“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 pass 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 shore 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 passed 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 passed. 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 l7th 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 altitude 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.
In the Midst of a Grand Canyon Rapid.Studio painting by F. S. Dellenbaugh.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 dashing 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.
The Grand Canyon—Granite Buttresses.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
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 passed 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.
The Basket Maker.
Old woman of the Kaibab Pai Utes. Behind is the typical Pai Ute dwelling of boughs and brush. The dwellings of the Shewits are similar.
Photograph by J. K. Hillers, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
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 circumstance 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, assuring 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.1 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.
Meanwhile the boat party dashed safely on through a succession of rapids till noon, when they arrived at another very bad place. In working through this by means of lines, Bradley was let down in one of the boats to fend her off the rocks, and finding himself in a serious predicament started to cut the line, when the stern of the boat pulled away and he shot down alone. He was a powerful man, and snatching up the steering oar, with several strong strokes he put her head down stream and immediately boat and all disappeared amidst the foaming breakers. But he came out unharmed, and in time to render service to Powell’s boat, which was badly shaken up in the passage. The other men of Bradley’s boat, left behind, were obliged to make a long and difficult climb before they were able to rejoin their craft. By night they had run entirely out of the granite, and at noon the. next day, without encountering any more serious trouble, they emerged at last from the depths of the giant chasm. They were at the mouth of the Grand Wash. The Dragon of Waters was vanquished. Not that the Dragon would not fight again just as before, but those who attacked him in future would understand his temper.
Brother Belder’s—Virgen City.
A typical frontier Mormon home.
Photograph by U. S. Geol. Survey. |
Below this point Powell was guided by a manuscript journal which Jacob Hamblin and two other Mormons, Miller and Crosby, had kept on a boat journey a few years earlier from the Grand Wash to Callville. Ives and others having been up to Callville, the exploration of the Colorado was now complete. There was no part of it unknown; and Powell’s feat in descending through the long series of difficult canyons stands unrivalled in the annals of exploration on this continent. “The relief from danger and the joy of success are great,” he writes. “Ever before us has been an unknown danger, heavier than immediate peril. Every waking hour passed in the Grand Canyon has been one of toil.” His chief concern now was the fate of the men who had deserted him, but this was not revealed till the next year. Had they remained with the others, they probably would have gone safely through, but had they died, it would have been properly and gloriously, in the battle with the fierce river. In the history of expeditions, it is usually those who depart from the original plan who suffer most, for this plan is generally well considered beforehand, whereas any subsequent change is mainly based on error or fear. Running on through a couple of small canyons, they discovered on the bank some Pai Utes, who ran away, but a little farther down they came to another camp where several did not run. Nothing could be learned from them about the whites, yet a short distance below this they came upon three white men and a native hauling a seine. They had reached the goal! It was the mouth of the Virgen River! The men in the boat had heard that the whole party was lost and were on the lookout for wreckage. They were a father and his sons, named Asa, Mormons from a town about twenty miles up the Virgen. The total stock of food left the explorers was ten pounds of flour, fifteen of dried apples, and about seventy of coffee. Powell and his brother here said farewell to their companions of the long and perilous journey. They went to the Mormon settlements, while the others continued down the river in the boats to Yuma where Hawkins and Bradley left. Sumner and Hall continued to the Gulf which they reached before the end of September.
This expedition, by hard labour, with good boats had, accomplished in about thirty working days the distance from the mouth of Grand River down, while White claimed to have done it on a clumsy raft in eleven! And where White professed to find smooth sailing in his imaginary voyage, Powell had discovered the most dangerous river of all.
Of his companions on this extraordinary journey, Powell says “I was a maimed man, my right arm was gone; and these brave men, these good men, never forgot it. In every danger my safety was their first care, and in every waking hour some kind service was rendered me, and they transfigured my misfortune into a boon.”
1I 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.
