Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico

by E. L. Kolb

Below this were two or three cozy little ranch houses and a few scattered cattle ranches, with cattle browsing back in the trees. All this time it was getting hotter, and I was thankful for my sheltering cover. My lunch, prepared in the morning, was eaten as I drifted. Except in a few quiet stretches I did little rowing, just enough to keep the boat away from the overhanging banks and in the strong current.

The bottom lands began to build up again with banks of gravel and clay, growing higher with every mile. The deciduous trees gave way to the desert growths: the cholla, "the shower of gold," and the palo verde and the other acacias. Here were the California or valley-quail; and lean, long-legged jack-rabbits. Here too were the coyotes, leaner than the rabbits, but efficient, shifty-eyed, and insolent. One could admire but could hardly respect them.

I had entertained hopes of reaching Parker that evening, but supposed the hour would be late if I reached it at all. Imagine my surprise, then, when at half-past four I heard the whistle of a train, and another turn revealed the Parker bridge. I had been told by others that it had taken them three or four days to reach this point on a low stage of water. Evidently the high water is much better for rapid and interesting travel.

Here at the bridge, which was a hundred feet above the river, was a dredge, and an old flat-bottomed steamboat, a relic of a few years past, before the government built the Laguna dam above Yuma, and condemned the Colorado as a navigable stream. Those were the days which the Colorado steamboat men recall with as much fond remembrance as the old-time boatmen of the Mississippi remember their palmy days.

In spite of the fact that the boats were flat-bottomed and small, it was real steamboating of an exciting nature at least. At times they beat up against the current as far as the mouth of the Rio Virgin. In low water the channels shifted back and forth first choked with sand on one side of the stream, then on the other. While the total fall from Fort Mojave, a few miles above Needles, to the Gulf is only 525 feet, considerable of that fall came in short sections, first with a swift descent, then in a quiet stretch. Even in the high-water stage I was finding some such places.

Parker stood a mile back from the river, on top of the level gravelly earth which stretched for miles on either side of the river clear to the mountains. This earth and gravel mixture was so firmly packed that even the cactus had a scant foothold. The town interested me for one reason only, this being, that I could get my meals for the evening and the following morning, instead of having to cook them myself. After I had eaten them, however, there was a question in my mind if my own cooking, bad as it was, would not have answered the purpose just as well. The place was a new railroad town on an Indian reservation, a town of great expectations, somewhat deferred.

It was not as interesting to me as my next stop at Ahrenburg, some fifty miles below Parker. This place while nothing but a collection of dilapidated adobe buildings, had an air of romance about it which was missing in the newer town. Ahrenburg had seen its day. Many years ago it was a busy mining camp, and the hope is entertained by the faithful who still reside in its picturesque adobe homes that it will come back with renewed vigour. Here at Ahrenburg I met a character who added greatly to the interest of my stay. He was a gigantic, raw-boned Frenchman, at that time engaged in the construction of a motor boat; but a miner, a sailor, and a soldier of fortune in many ways, one who had pried into many of the hidden corners of the country and had a graphic way of describing what he had seen. I was his guest until late that night, and was entertained royally on what humble fare he had to offer. We both intended to renew our acquaintance in the morning, but some prowling Mexicans near my boat, croaking frogs, and swarms of mosquitos gave me a restless night. With the first glimmer of daylight I was up, and half an hour later I was away on the flood.

This was my big day. The current was better than much of that above; I was getting used to the heat, and, instead of idly drifting, I pulled steadily at the oars. The river twisted back and forth in great loops with the strong current, as is usual, always on the outside of the loops, close to the overhanging banks. I would keep my boat in this current, with a wary lookout over my shoulder for fallen trees and sudden turns, which had a way of appearing when least expected. At some such places the stream was engaged at undermining the banks which rose eight and ten feet above the water. Occasional sections, containing tons of earth and covered with tall, slender willow trees, would topple over, falling on the water with the roar of a cannon or a continued salute of cannons; for the falling, once started, quite often extended for half a mile down the stream. At one such place eighteen trees fell in three minutes, and it would be safe to say that a hundred trees were included in the extended fall. The trees, sixty feet high, resembled a field of gigantic grass or unripened grain; the river was a reaper, cutting it away at the roots. Over they tumbled to be buried in the stream; the water would swirl and boil, earth and trees would disappear; then the mass of leaf-covered timber, freed of the earth, would wash away to lodge on the first sand-bar, and the formation of a new island or a new shore would begin.

Then again, the banks were barren, composed of gravel and clay, centuries older than the verdure-covered land, undisturbed, possibly, since some glacial period deposited it there. But a shifting of the channel directed the attack against these banks. Here the swift current would find a little irregularity on the surface and would begin its cutting. The sand-laden water bored exactly like an auger, in fast-cutting whirls. One such place I watched for a half-hour from the very beginning, until the undermined section, fourteen feet high, began to topple, and I pulled out to safety, but not far enough to escape a ducking in the resulting wave.

Below this, instead of a firm earth, it was a loose sand and gravel mixture twenty feet above the river. Here for half a mile the entire bank was moving, slowly at the top, gathering speed at the bottom. While close to this I heard a peculiar hissing as of carbonated water all about me. At first I thought there were mineral springs underneath, but found the noise was caused by breaking air bubbles carried under the stream with the sands. All this day such phenomena continued, sliding sand-banks and tumbling jungles. In these latter places some cattle had suffered. Their trails ran parallel with the stream. No doubt they had one or two places where they drank cut down to the stream Knowing nothing of the cutting underneath, they had been precipitated into the flood, and now their carcasses were food for swarms of vultures gathered for an unholy feast.