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.
See the
map which appeared on the opposite page.
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 Johnson, the chief owner and pilot, had become an expert in handling a steamboat amid the unusual conditions. He had succeeded in making a truce with the dragon. And he had secured the friendship of the tribes of Amerinds living along the banks; his men and his property were safe anywhere; his steamers often carried jolly bands of Cocopas or of Yumas from place to place. In arranging a government expedition to explore to the farthest point practicable for steamboats, the sensible course would have been to advise with Johnson and to charter his staunch steamer Colorado, together with himself, thus gaining at the very outset an immense double advantage: a boat perfectly modelled for the demands to be made upon it, and a guide entirely familiar with the tricks of the perfidious waters. Especially important would this have been because Lieutenant Ives, who was instructed to direct this work, was ordered to accomplish it at the lowest and worst stage of the stream. Ives had been Whipple’s chief assistant in 1853-54, and therefore well understood the situation. But he states that the company was “unable to spare a boat except for a compensation beyond the limits of the appropriation.” As a boat was spared, however, for the less important matter of going far up the river to ferry Beale across, it would appear that either the negotiations were not conducted in a proper spirit, or that Ives rather preferred a boat of his own. The cost of building in Philadelphia the boat he used, and sending her in sections to San Francisco, and thence to the Colorado, must have been very great. The steamer was ordered June 1, 1857, and had to be at the mouth of the Colorado by December 1st of the same year. After a trial on the Delaware, a mill-pond compared with the Colorado, she was hastily shipped, with all her defects, by way of Panama, there being no time to make any changes. The chief trouble discovered was radical, being a structural weakness of the hull. To, in a measure, offset this, timbers and bolts were obtained in San Francisco, the timbers to be attached to the outside of the hull on putting the sections together, there being no room within. It requires little understanding of naval architecture to perceive that a great handicap was thus imposed on the little vessel. Yet Lieutenant Ives says, on the trial trip she was “found satisfactory”! By November 1st, the party was on board the schooner Monterey, bound for the head of the Gulf. Though the vessel was loaded down with supplies for Fort Yuma, room was made for the Ives expedition and they arrived, passing through a heavy gale in the gulf, at Robinson’s Landing on November 30th. The schooner was anchored over a shoal, and was soon aground, as the fierce tide ran out, a circumstance that enabled her to stay there and stem the torrent. A deep booming sound was presently heard, growing louder and nearer, and
“in half an hour a great wave several feet in height, could be distinctly seen flashing and sparkling in the moonlight, extending from one bank to the other and advancing swiftly upon us. While it was only a few hundred yards distant, the ebb tide continued to flow by at the rate of three miles an hour. A point of land and an exposed bar close under our lee broke the wave into several long swells, and as these met the ebb the broad sheet around us boiled up and foamed like the surface of a cauldron, and then, with scarcely a moment of slack water, the whole went whirling by in the opposite direction. In a few moments the low rollers had passed the islands and united again in a single bank of water, which swept up the narrowing channel with the thunder of a cataract.”
Robinson’s Landing.
Mouth of the Colorado River. Starting-point of Lieut. Ive’s exploration.
Photograph by Lieut. Ives. Redrawn by J. J. Young. |
This was the great tidal bore once more, which, at the occurrence of the spring tides, makes the entrance of the river extremely dangerous. It is due to the narrowing of the Gulf of California forcing the tides into close quarters, and its violence is augmented by collision with the equally furious current of the Colorado. The battle between this tidal wave and the Colorado continues for many miles, till at last the sea tide gradually loses its power and succumbs to the flood of the river.
1 The latter falls at the mouth, according to Ives, about thirty feet in a few hours after the ebb begins. The shallower the water as the tide rushes in against the ebb, the angrier the wave becomes, sometimes reaching a height of ten or twelve feet.
At Robinson’s Landing, a mere mud flat, a camp was established and preparations made for the voyage to the extreme limit of navigation. The parts of the steamer were put ashore and a suitable spot selected whereon to set her up. The high tides were over for a month, and the mud began to dry, enabling the party to pitch their tents. It was an uncomfortable spot for expedition headquarters, but the best that could be had, as the Monterey was not permitted by her owners to venture farther up the river. But this delay, discomfort, and difficulty, to say nothing of expense, might have been avoided could a contract have been made with the existing steamboat company. As the bank on which the boat was to be reconstructed was not likely to be overflowed more than a foot by the next high tide, a month later, an excavation was made wherein to build the steamer that she might certainly come afloat at the desired time. Sixty holes had to be made in the iron plates so that the four stiffening timbers could be attached to the bottom to prevent the craft from breaking in two under the extra-heavy boiler. Inside, cross timbers were also added to resist the strain. On, December 17th, two steamers appeared from the fort, in command, respectively, of Johnson and Wilcox, to transport the army supplies to their destination. Robinson, after whom the landing was called because he had a cabin there, was with the steamboats, and, as he knew the river, especially as far as Yuma, Ives engaged him for pilot.
The Steamer “Explorer” in which Lieut. Ives in 1857 Ascended the Colorado to Foot of Black Canyon.Sketch by H. B. Mollhausen.By the end of the month, the Explorer, as the Ives boat was named, was ready for the expected high tide. She was fifty-four feet long over all, not quite half the length of Johnson’s Colorado. Amidships she was open, but the bow was decked, and at the stern was a cabin, seven by eight feet, the top of which formed an outlook. For armament, she was supplied on the bow with a four-pound howitzer, though this weapon was not likely to be of much service. When the anticipated flood arrived on the night of December 30th, steam was turned on at the critical moment, the engines worked the stern-wheel, and Lieutenant Ives had the satisfaction of seeing the Explorer, under the bright moonlight, slowly back out of the pit which had been her cradle into the swirling, seething current. As the tide continued to rise, Ives feared the whole flat would soon be inundated, so everything belonging to the expedition was stowed on board till the Explorer’s gunwales were no more than six inches above the surface. Through this circumstance, the expedition came near a disastrous end the next night, when the steamer proceeded up the river on the flood tide. A squall was met and the boat shipped water alarmingly, but fortunately the wind died away as quickly as it had come up. The Explorer was saved, and the journey was continued over the swiftly gliding torrent.
As they went on after this in daylight, some Cocopas they met grinned rather contemptuously, and called this the “chiquito steamboat.” A considerable amount of stores was left on the bank in their care, to be picked up by Captain Wilcox, who, going down on one of the fort steamers, had passed the Explorer, and offered to take these extra stores to the fort on his return. They were placed with the Cocopas by his direction, an arrangement that better describes the relations of the steamboat people and the natives than anything that could be said about them. The fuel used was wood, of which there was great abundance along the shore, the hard, fine-grained mesquite making a particularly hot fire. The routine of advance was to place a man with a sounding-pole at the bow, while Robinson, the pilot, had his post on the deck of the cabin, but the sounding was more for record purposes than to assist Robinson, who was usually able to predict exactly when the water would shoal or deepen. Later, Ives says: “If the ascent of the river is accomplished, it will be due to his skill and good management.” Besides the ordinary shifting of the sands by the restless, current, there was another factor occasionally to guard against. This was earthquakes. Sometimes they might change the depth of water on the lower river in the twinkling of an eye. On one occasion, a schooner lying in a deep part was found suddenly aground in three feet of water, with no other warning than a rumble and a shock. Heintzelman, in one of his reconnoissances, discovered the adjacent land full of cracks, through which oozed streams of sulphurous water, mud, and sand, and Diaz, in 1540, came to banks of “hot ashes” which it was impossible to cross, the whole ground trembling beneath his feet. At low water, even in the lower reaches of the river, a boat is liable to run aground often, and has to be backed off to try her fortune in another place. The bottom, however, is soft, the current strong, so no harm is done and the rush of water helps to cut the boat loose. One does not easily comprehend how sensitive a pilot becomes to every tremor of the hull in this sort of navigation. The quality of the boat’s vibration speaks to his nerves in a distinct language, and the suck of the wheel emphasises the communication.
Looking down the Grand Canyon from the Mouth of the Kanab.
Depth about 4000 feet.
Oil sketch by F. S. Dellenbaugh. |
The Explorer at length arrived at Yuma. Here the remainder of the party, including Dr. Newberry, having come across country, joined the expedition, and further preparations were made for the more difficult task above. The craft was lightened as far as possible, but at the best she still drew two and one-half feet, while the timbers bolted to the bottom were a great detriment, catching on snags and ploughing into the mud of the shoals. There were twenty-four men to be carried, besides all the baggage that must be taken, even though a pack-train was to leave, after the departure of the boat, to transport extra supplies to the end of the voyage, wherever that might be. It is not easy to understand why so large a party was necessary. Some few miles above Yuma they came to the first range of mountains that closes in on the water, suddenly entering a narrow pass several hundred feet deep. Seven miles farther on, they went through a small canyon where another range is severed. This was called Purple Hill Pass, while the first one was named Explorer’s Pass, after the steamer. The first approach to a real canyon was encountered a short distance above. Emerging from this, called Canebrake, from some canes growing along the sides, the Explorer ran aground, resting there for two hours. They had now passed through the Chocolate Mountains, the same range that Alarçon mentions, and as he records no other he probably went no farther up than the basin Ives is now entering, the Great Colorado Valley. Alarçon doubtless proceeded to the upper part of this valley, about to latitude thirty-four, where he raised the cross to mark the spot. Two miles above the head of the canyon, the power of the Explorer was matched against a stiff current that came swirling around the base of a perpendicular rock one hundred feet high. With the steam pressure then on, she was not equal to the encounter and made no advance, whereupon she was headed for a steep bank to allow the men to leap ashore with a line and tow her beyond the opposition. Above, the current was milder, but the river spread out to such an extent that progress was exceedingly difficult, and Ives expresses a fear that this might prove the head of navigation, yet he must then have been aware (and certainly was when he published his report) that Johnson at that very moment was far beyond this with a steamer larger than the one he was on. It was now January 17, 1858, and it was on January 23d, that Johnson was at the point where Beale intended to cross. The steamer was used as a ferry and then left the same day for Yuma. Captain Johnson with his steamboat had been to the head of navigation. Ives and Johnson must now pass each other before the end of this month of December, and the meeting of the two steamers took place somewhere in this Colorado Valley, for, under date of January 31st, Ives says: “Lieutenant Tipton took advantage of an opportunity afforded a few days ago, by our meeting Captain Johnson, with Lieutenant White and party returning to the fort, and went back with them in order to bring up the pack-train.” He does not mention, however, that Johnson was piloting a steamboat larger than the Explorer. Indeed, I have been told that he failed to reply to Johnson’s salute. Slowly they worked their way up, and on up, toward their final goal, though the water was exceptionally low. At last reaching Bill Williams Fork, Ives, who had seen it at the time he was with Whipple about four years earlier, could not at first find it, though, on the former occasion, in the same season, it had been a stream thirty feet wide. It was now a feeble rivulet, the old mouth being filled up and overgrown with willows. Approaching Mohave Canyon, a rapid was encountered, necessitating the carrying forward of an anchor, from which a line was brought to the bow, and this being kept taut, with the boat under full steam the obstruction was surmounted without damage. This was the common method of procedure at rapids. This canyon, Ives, says was a “scene of such imposing grandeur as he had never before witnessed,” yet it is only a harbinger of the greater sublimity extending along the water above for a thousand miles. Mohave Canyon and The Needles soon were left behind, and they were steaming through the beautiful Mohave Valley, where the patient footsteps of the padres and the restless tramp of the trappers had so long ago passed and been forgotten. Probably not one of that party remembered that Pattie on horseback had covered this same field over thirty years before, or that rare old Garces guided his tired mule along these very banks a full half century ahead of Pattie. To-day, the comfortable traveller on the railway, crossing the river near The Needles, has also forgotten these things and Lieutenant Ives as well.
Black Canyon—Looking Down.
Photograph by Wheeler Exp. |
Many Cocopas, Yumas, Mohaves, and Chemehuevis were met with since the trip began, but there had been no trouble with any of them. Ives now began to inquire for a former guide of Whipple’s, whom he pleasantly remembered and whose name was Ireteba. Fortunately, he soon came across him and engaged his services. Ireteba was a Mohave, but possessed one of those fine natures found in every clime and colour. He was always true and intelligent, and of great service to the expedition. The Explorer pushed on, encountering many difficulties, some due to the unfortunate timbers on the bottom, which often became wedged in rocks, besides increasing the draught by about six inches, a serious matter at this extremely low stage of water. “It is probable,” says Ives, “that there is not one season in ten when even the Explorer would encounter one fourth of the difficulty that she has during the unprecedentedly low stage of water.” At one rapid, after the boat by hard labour had been brought to the crest, the line broke and she at once fell back, bumping over the rocks and finally lodging amidst a mass so firmly that it required half the next day to pull her out. The second attempt to surmount the rapid was successful, and they were then rewarded by a fierce gale from the north, detaining them twenty-four hours, filling everything with sand, and dragging the steamboat from her moorings to cast her again upon the rocks. When, at last, they could go on they came after a short time to a canyon deeper and grander than any they had yet seen, called Black Canyon, because it is cut through the Black Mountains. Ives was uncertain, at the moment, whether this was the entrance to what was called Big Canyon (Grand Canyon) or not. The Explorer by this time had passed through a number of rapids and the crew were growing expert at this sort of work, so that another rapid a hundred yards below the mouth of the canyon was easily conquered. The current becoming slack, the steamer went gaily on toward the narrow gateway, where, “flanked by walls many hundreds of feet in height, rising perpendicularly out of the water, the Colorado emerged from the bowels of the range.” Suddenly the boat stopped with a crash. The bow had squarely met a sunken rock. The men forward were knocked completely overboard, those on the after-deck were thrown below, the boiler was jammed out of place, the steampipe was doubled up, the wheelhouse torn away, and numerous minor damages were sustained. The Explorer had discovered her head of navigation! They thought she was about to sink, but luckily she had struck in such a way that no hole was made and they were able by means of lines and the skiff to tow her to a sandbank for repairs. Here the engineer, Carroll, and Captain Robinson devoted themselves to making her again serviceable, while, with the skiff, Ives and two companions continued on up the deep gorge. Though this was the end of the upward journey, so far as the Explorer was concerned, Johnson with his steamboat had managed to go clear through this canyon.
Fortification Rock.
Castellated Gravels at the foot. Near the head of Black Canyon.
Photograph by Wheeler Exp. |
Rations were at a low stage, consisting entirely, for the past three weeks, of corn and beans, purchased from the natives, but even on this diet without salt the skiff party, worked its way steadily upward over many rapids through the superb chasm. “No description,” says Ives, “can convey an idea of the varied and majestic grandeur of this peerless waterway. Wherever the river makes a turn, the entire panorama changes, and one startling novelty after another appears and disappears with bewildering rapidity.” I commend these pages of Lieutenant Ives, and, in fact, his whole report, to all who delight in word-painting of natural scenery, for the lieutenant certainly handled his pen as well as he did his sword.2 Emerging from the solemn depths of Black Canyon (twenty-five miles long) he and his small party passed Fortification Rock and continued on two miles up the river to an insignificant little stream coming in from the north, which he surmised might be the Virgen, though he hardly thought it could be, and it was not. It was Vegas Wash. This was his highest point. Turning about, he descended to the steamboat camp and called that place the head of navigation, not that he did not believe a steamer might ascend, light, through Black Canyon, but he considered it impracticable. Running now down-stream in the Explorer, the expected pack-train was encountered at the foot of Pyramid Canyon, and a welcome addition was made to the supplies.
The Canyon of Diamond Creek.
Photograph by W. H. Jackson. |
The steamboat was now sent back to the fort and Ives prepared for a land journey, which led him eastward over much the same route that Garces had traversed so long ago on his march to Oraibi. Ireteba was his guide. They went to the mouth of Diamond Creek, where they had their first view of the Grand Canyon, or Big Canyon, as they called it, of which Ireteba had before given them some description. The illustrations given in Ives’s report of both Black and Grand Canyons are a libel on these magnificent wonder-places, and in no way compare with the lieutenant’s admirable pen-pictures. Crossing the Colorado Plateau (which another explorer ten or twelve years later claims the honour of naming, forgetting that Ives uses the name in his report), they visited the Havasupai in their deep canyon home, just as Garces had done, and then proceeded to the towns of the Moki. Ives was deeply impressed by the repellant nature of the great canyon and the surroundings, and remarks: “It seems intended by nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.” Late in the same year that Lieutenant Ives made his interesting and valuable exploration, another military post was established on the Colorado, and called Fort Mohave, just about where the California line intersects the stream. Lower down, Colorado City had been laid out several years before (1854) under amusing circumstances. The Yuma ferry at that time was operated by a German, thrifty after his kind, and on the lookout for a “good thing.” A party of indigent prospectors, returning from the survey of a mine in Mexico, reached the Arizona bank with no money to pay for the crossing, and hit upon the ingenious plan of surveying a town site here and trading lots to the German for a passage. Boldly commencing operations, the sight of the work going on soon brought the ferryman over to investigate, and when he saw the map under construction he fell headlong into the scheme, which would, as they assured him, necessitate a steam ferry.3 The result was the immediate sale of a portion of the town to him and the exchange of a lot for the necessary transportation to the opposite bank. Afterwards, these parties did what they could to establish the reality of the project, but up to date it has not been noted as a metropolis, and the floods of 1861-2 undermined its feeble strength. Another name for it was Arizona City.
Fort Yuma and the Old Railway Bridge of the Southern Pacific.
Photograph by C. R. Savage. |
The year following the Ives expedition, Captain Macomb (1859) was sent to examine the junction of the Green and Grand rivers. For a considerable distance he followed, from Santa Fé, almost the same trail that Escalante had travelled eighty-three years previously. Dr. Newberry, the eminent geologist who had been with Ives, was one of this party, and he has given an interesting account of the journey. The region lying immediately around the place they had set out for is one of the most formidable in all the valley of the Colorado. Looking about one there, from the summit of the canyon walls, it seems an impossibility for anything without the power of flight to approach the spot except by way of the river channels. Macomb and Newberry succeeded in forcing their way to within about six miles of the junction, there to be completely baffled and turned back. Arriving finally at the brink of the canyon of Grand River, Newberry says:
“On every side we were surrounded by columns, pinnacles, and castles of fantastic shapes, which limited our view, and by impassable canons, which restricted our movements. South of us, about a mile distant, rose one of the castle-like buttes, which I have mentioned, and to which, though with difficulty, we made our way. This butte was composed of alternate layers of chocolate-colored sandstone and shale about one thousand feet in height; its sides nearly perpendicular, but most curiously ornamented with columns and pilasters, porticos and colonnades, cornices and battlements, flanked here and there with tall outstanding towers, and crowned with spires so slender that it seemed as though a breath of air would suffice to topple them from their foundations. To accomplish the object for which we had come so far, it seemed necessary that we should ascend this butte. The day was perfectly clear and intensely hot, the mercury standing at 92 degrees in the shade, and the red sandstone, out of which the landscape was carved, glowed in the heat of the burning sunshine. Stripping off nearly all our clothing, we made the attempt, and, after two hours of most arduous labor, succeeded in reaching the summit. The view which there burst upon us was such as amply repaid us for all our toil. It baffles description.”
At the Junction of the Green and Grand on the Surface.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
He goes on to say that, while the great canyon, meaning the Grand Canyon, with its gigantic cliffs, presents grander scenes, they have less variety and beauty of detail than this. They were here able to see over an area of some fifty miles diameter, where, hemmed in by lines of lofty step-like mesas, a great basin lay before them as on a map. There was no vegetation, “nothing but bare and barren rocks of rich and varied colours shimmering in the sunlight. Scattered over the plain were thousands of the fantastically formed buttes to which I have referred…pyramids, domes, towers, columns, spires of every conceivable form and size.” There were also multitudes of canyons, ramifying in every direction, “deep, dark, and ragged, impassable to everything but the winged bird.” At the nearest point was the canyon of the Grand, while four miles to the south another great gorge was discerned joining it, which their Amerind guides pronounced to be that of Green River. Finding it utterly impossible for them to reach this place, they returned.
Thus, after all these years of endeavour, the mighty Colorado foamed away amidst this terrible environment as if no human element yet existed in the world. And as it continued to baffle all attempts to probe its deeper mysteries, the dread of it and the fear of it grew and grew, till he who suggested that a man might pass through the bewildering chasms and live, was regarded as light-headed. Then came the awful war of the Rebellion, and for several years little thought was bestowed on the problem.4
Some few prospectors for mineral veins began investigations in the neighbourhood of the lower part of the Grand Canyon, and the gorge was entered from below, about 1864, by O. D. Gass and three other men. I met Gass at his home at Las Vegas (see cut, page 137) in 1875, but I did not then know he had been in the canyon and did not hear his story. It was not till 1866 that any one tried again to navigate the river above Mohave. In that year Captain Rodgers, who for four years had been on the lower Colorado, took the steamboat Esmeralda, ninety-seven feet long and drawing three and one-half feet of water, up as far as Callville, near the mouth of the Virgen, which was several miles beyond the highest point attained by Ives in his skiff, but little, if any, farther than Johnson had gone with his steamboat. He ascended the most difficult place, Roaring Rapids in Black Canyon, in seven minutes, and was of the opinion that it could as easily be surmounted at any stage of water, except perhaps during the spring rise. It does not matter much now, for it is not likely that any steam craft will soon again have occasion to traverse that canyon. The completion of the railways was a death blow to steam navigation on the Colorado, yet, in the future, when the fertile bottoms are brought under cultivation, small steamboats will probably be utilised for local transportation.
The Barrel Cactus Compared with the Height of a Man.
Photograph by C. R. Savage. |
The journey of the Esmeralda added nothing to what was already known. The following year, 1867, a man was picked up at Callville, in an exhausted and famishing condition, by a frontiersman named Hardy. When he had been revived he told his story. It was that he had come on a raft through the Grand Canyon above, and all the canyons antecedent to that back to a point on Grand River. The story was apparently straightforward, and it was fully accepted. At last, it was thought, a human being has passed through this Valley of the Shadow of Death and lived to tell of its terrors. Hardy took him down to Fort Mohave, where he met Dr. Parry,5 who recorded his whole story, drawn out by many questions, and believed it. This was not surprising; for, no man ever yet having accomplished what White claimed to have done, there was no way of checking the points, of his tale. “Now, at last,” remarks Dr. Parry, “we have a perfectly authentic account, from an intelligent source, from a man who actually traversed its formidable depths, and who, fortunately for science, still lives to detail his trustworthy observations of this remarkable voyage.” The doctor was too confiding. Had I the space I would give here the whole of White’s story, for it is one of the best bits of fiction I have ever read. He had obtained somehow a general smattering of the character of the river, but as there were trappers still living, Kit Carson, for example, who possessed a great deal of information about it, this was not a difficult matter. But that he had no exact knowledge of any part of the river above the lower end of the Grand Canyon, is apparent to one who is familiar with the ground, and the many discrepancies brand the whole story as a fabrication. In the language of the frontier, he “pitched a yarn,” and it took beautifully. Hardy, whom I met in Arizona a good many years ago, told me he believed the man told the truth, but his belief was apparently based only on the condition White was in when rescued. That he was nearly dead is true, but that is about all of his yarn that is. White was thirty-two years old, and from Kenosha, Wisconsin. He said that, with two others, he was prospecting in Southwestern Colorado in the summer of that year, 1867, when, on Grand River, they were attacked by the Utes. Baker, the leader, fell mortally wounded. Of course, White and the other man, Strole, stood by their leader, in the teeth of the enemy’s fire, till he expired. What would the story have been without this example of devotion and fortitude? Then, holding the pursuers in check, they slowly retreated down the side canyon they were in to the main gorge, where they discovered an abundance of driftwood, and decided to make a raft with which to escape. This raft consisted of three sticks of cottonwood about ten feet long and eight inches diameter, tied together with lariats. They had abandoned their horses above, bringing only their arms, ammunition, and some food. Waiting for midnight to come so that their pursuers might not discover their intention, they seized their poles and, under the waning moon, cast off, and were soon on the tempestuous tide, rushing through the yawning chasm. “Through the long night they clung to the raft as it dashed against
Canyon of San Juan River Looking West at Honiket Trail, Utah.
Photograph by Charles Goodman. |
half-concealed rocks, or whirled about like a plaything in some eddy.” When daylight came they landed; as they had a smoother current and less rugged banks, though the canyon walls appeared to have increased in height. They strengthened their raft and went on. In the afternoon, after having floated about thirty miles from the starting point they reached the junction of the Grand and Green. So far all is well, but here he makes his first break, as he had no conception of the actual character of the rivers at the junction. He says the canyon now far surpassed that of either of the forming streams, which is not so. For five or six miles below the junction there is little change, yet he describes the walls as being four thousand feet high, an altitude never attained in Cataract Canyon at all, the highest being somewhat under three thousand, while at the junction they are only thirteen hundred. Then he goes on to say that detached pinnacles appeared to rise “one above the other,” for one thousand feet more, giving an altitude here of five thousand feet, clearly an impression in his mind of the lower end of the
Grand Canyon, which he had doubtless become somewhat familiar with in some prospecting trip. He fancied the “Great Canyon” began at the junction of the Grand and Green, and he did not appreciate the distance that intervened between Callville and that point. They tied up at night and travelled in the day. No mention is made of the terrific rapids which roar in Cataract Canyon, but he speaks of the “grey sandstone walls” the lower portion smooth from the action of floods. There exist some greyish walls; but most are red except in the granite gorges of the Grand Canyon, where, for a thousand feet, they are black. Below the junction, forty miles, they came to the mouth of the San Juan! Yet Cataract Canyon and Narrow together, the first canyons of the Colorado proper, are fifty miles long and the San Juan comes in at least seventy-five miles below their end. The walls of the San Juan he describes as being as high as those of the
A Glen of Glen Canyon.
These are numerous hence the name. |
Colorado, which he has just been talking about, that is, five thousand feet, yet for these seventy-five miles he would have actually been passing between walls of about one thousand feet. He says he could not escape here because the waters of the San Juan were so violent they filled its canyon from bank to bank. In reality, he could have made his way out of the canyon (Glen Canyon) in a great many places in the long distance between the foot of Narrow Canyon and the San Juan. There is nothing difficult about it. But not knowing this, and nobody else knowing it at that time, the yarn went very well. Also, below the San Juan, as far as Lee’s Ferry, there are numerous opportunities to leave the canyon; and there, are a great many attractive bottoms all the way through sunny Glen Canyon, where landings could have been made in a
bona fide journey, and birds snared; anything rather than to go drifting along day after day toward dangers unknown. “At every bend of the river it seemed as if they were descending deeper into the earth, and that the walls were coming closer together above them, shutting out the narrow belt of sky, thickening the black shadows, and redoubling the echoes that went up from the foaming waters,” all of which is nonsense. They were not yet, even taking their own, or rather his own, calculations, near the
Grand Canyon, and the whole one hundred and forty-nine miles of Glen Canyon are simply charming; altogether delightful. One can paddle along in any sort of craft, can leave the river in many places, and in general enjoy himself. I have been over the stretch twice, once at low water and again at high, so I speak from abundant experience. Naïvely he remarks, “as yet they had seen no natural bridge spanning the chasm above them, nor had fall or cataract prevented their safe advance!” Yet they are supposed to have passed through the forty-one miles of Cataract Canyon’s turmoil, which I venture to say no man could ever forget. They had been only four days getting to a point below the San Juan, simply drifting; that is about two hundred miles, or some fifty miles a daylight day. Around three o’clock on the fourth day they heard the deep roar as of a waterfall in front of them.
Cataract Canyon Rapid at Low Water.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. |
“They felt the raft agitated, then whirled along with frightful rapidity towards a wall that seemed to bar all further progress. As they approached the cliff the river made a sharp bend, around which the raft swept, disclosing to them, in a long vista, the water lashed into foam, as it poured through a narrow precipitous gorge, caused by huge masses of rock detached from the main walls. There was no time to think. The logs strained as if they would break their fastenings. The waves dashed around the men, and the raft was buried in the seething waters. White clung to the logs with the grip of death. His comrade stood up for an instant with the pole in his hands, as if to guide the raft from the rocks against which it was plunging; but he had scarcely straightened before the raft seemed to leap down a chasm and, amid the deafening roar of waters, White heard a shriek that thrilled him to the heart, and, looking around, saw, through the mist and spray, the form of his comrade tossed for an instant on the water, then sinking out of sight in a whirlpool.”
On the fifth day White lashed himself to the raft. He then describes a succession of rapids, passing which with great difficulty he reached a stream that he afterward learned was the Little Colorado. He said the canyon was like that of the San Juan, but they are totally different. The current of this stream swept across that of the Colorado, “causing in a black chasm on the opposite bank a large and dangerous whirlpool.” He could not avoid this and was swept by the cross current into this awful place, which, to relieve the reader’s anxiety, I hasten to add, does not exist. There is no whirlpool whatever at the mouth of the Little Colorado, nor any other danger. But White now felt that further exertion was useless, and amidst the “gurgling” waters closed his eyes for some minutes, when, feeling a strange swinging sensation, he opened them and found that he was circling round the whirlpool, sometimes close to the terrible vortex, etc. He thought he fainted. He was nothing if not dramatic. When he recovered it was night. Then for the first time he thought of prayer. “I spoke as if from my very soul, and said: ‘Oh, God, if there is a way out of this fearful place, show it to me, take me to it.’" His narrator says White’s voice here became husky and his features quivered. “I was still looking up with my hands clasped when I felt a different movement of the raft and turning to look at the whirlpool it was some distance behind (he could see it in the night!), and I was floating on the smoothest
Looking up the Grand Canyon from Mouth of Kanab Canyon.
Pencil sketch by F. S. Dellenbaugh. |
current I had yet seen in the canyon.” The current was now very slow and he found that the rapids were past. The terrible mythical whirlpool at the innocent mouth of the Little Colorado was the end of the turmoil, though he said the canyon went on, the course of the river being exceedingly crooked, and shut in by precipices of white sand rock! There is no white “sand-rock” in the
Grand Canyon. All through this terrific gorge wherein the river falls some eighteen hundred feet, White found a slow current and his troubles from rapids were over! For 217 miles of the worst piece of river in the world, he found no difficulty. The gloom and lack of food alone oppressed him, and he thought of plunging from the raft, but lacked the courage. Had he really entered the Grand Canyon his raft would have been speedily reduced to toothpicks and he would not have had the choice of remaining upon it. Finally, he reached a bank upon which some mesquite bushes grew, and he devoured the green pods. Then sailing on in a sort of stupor he was roused by voices and saw some Yampais, who gave him meat and roasted mesquite beans. Proceeding, he heard voices again and a dash of oars. It was Hardy and at last White was saved!
We have seen various actors passing before us in this drama, but I doubt if any of them have been more picturesque than this champion prevaricator. But he had related a splendid yarn. What it was intended to obscure would probably be quite as interesting as what he told. Just where he entered upon the river is of course impossible to decide, but that he never came through the Grand Canyon is as certain as anything can be. His story reveals an absolute ignorance of the river and its walls throughout the whole course he pretended to have traversed.
NOTE.—Mr. R. B. Stanton in 1907 discovered that White was alive in New Mexico. With a stenographer Mr. Stanton visited him and concludes that White was not responsible for the tale, and that Parry’s imagination filled in the details. Mr. Stanton proves absolutely that White never went through the Grand Canyon and that his route was from the foot of the Grand Canyon to Callville.
1The tide ascends thirty-seven miles. Lowest stage of water about three feet, average six feet, and highest about twenty feet.
2It may be of interest to state that Lieutenant Ives became an officer in the Confederate Army, and was killed in one of the battles of the Civil War.
3Across America and Asia, by Raphael Pumpelly, p. 60. The portion of this admirable work relating to the vicinity of the Colorado River will be found of great interest in this connection.
4The troops that were so foolishly and feebly sent against the Mormons in 1857 had some experience in Green River Valley, but it was not directly connected with this story and I will not introduce an account of it here.
5Parry’s first record of White’s story is in Report of Surveys for a Railway across the Continent by Wm. J. Palmer, 1868. Dr. C. C. Parry was assistant geologist of the Survey.
