Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico

by E. L. Kolb

What powerful, graceful birds these scavengers are, stronger than the eagle even, tireless and seemingly motionless as they drift along searching every nook and cranny for their provender! But aside from a grudgingly given tribute of admiration for their power, one has about as much respect for them as for the equally graceful rattlesnake, that other product of nature which flourishes in this desert land.

The bird life along this lower part of the river was wonderful in its variety. The birds of the desert mingled with those of the fertile lands. The song-birds vied with those of gorgeous plume. Water-birds disported themselves in the mud-banks and sloughs. The smaller birds seemed to pay little attention to the nearness of the hawks. Kingfisher perched on limbs overhanging the quiet pools, ready to drop at the faintest movement on the opaque water; the road-runner chased the festive lizard on the desert land back of the willows. Here also in the mesquite and giant cactus were thrush and Western meadow-larks and mocking-birds mimicking the call of the cat-bird. Down in the brush by the river was the happy little water-ousel, as cheerful in his way as the dumpy-built musical canyon wren. The Mexican crossbill appeared to have little fear of the migrating Northern shrike. There were warblers, cardinals, tanagers, waxwings, song-sparrows, and chickadees. Flitting droves of bush-tit dropped on to slender weeds, scarcely bending them, so light were they. Then in a minute they were gone. In the swamps or marshes were countless red-winged blackbirds.

The most unobservant person could not help but see birds here. I had expected to find water-fowl, for the Colorado delta is their breeding place; but I little expected to find so many land birds in the trees along the river. Instead of having a lonesome trip, every minute was filled with something new, interesting, and beautiful and I was having the time of my life.

I camped that night at Picachio,—meaning the Pocket,—eighty miles below Ahrenburg. This is still a mining district, but the pockets containing nuggets of gold which gave the place its name seem to have all been discovered at the time of the boom; the mining now done is in quartz ledges up on the sides of grim, mineral-stained hills. I was back in the land of rock again, a land showing the forces of nature in high points of foreign rock, shot up from beneath, penetrating the crust of the earth and in a few places emerging for a height of two hundred feet from the river itself, forming barren islands and great circling whirlpools, as large as that in the Niagara gorge, and I thought, for a while, almost as powerful. In one I attempted to keep to the short side of the river, but found it a difficult job, and one which took three times as long to accomplish as if I had allowed myself to be carried around the circle.

Then the land became level again, and the Chocolate Mountains were seen to the west. A hard wind blew across the stream, so that I had to drop my sunshade to prevent being carried against the rocks. This day I passed a large irrigation canal leading off from the stream, the second such on the entire course of the Colorado. Here a friendly ranchman called to me from the shore and warned me of the Laguna dam some distance below. He said the water was backed up for three miles, so I would know when I was approaching it.

In spite of this warning, I nearly came to grief at the dam. The wind had shifted until it blew directly down the stream. The river, nearly a mile wide, still ran with a powerful current; I ceased rowing and drifted down, over waves much like those one would find on a lake driven by a heavy wind. I saw some high poles and a heavy electric cable stretched across the stream, and concluded that this was the beginning of the dam. I began to look ahead for some sign of a barrier across the stream, far below, but I could see nothing of the kind; then as I neared the poles it suddenly dawned on me that there was no raised barrier which diverted all the water through a sluice, but a submerged dam, over which the flood poured, and that the poles were on that dam.

My sail-like sunshade was dropped as quickly as I could do it, and, grabbing the oars, I began to pull for the California shore.

It was fortunate for me that I happened to be comparatively near the shore when I began rowing. As it was, I landed below the diverting canal, and about a hundred yards above the dam. On examination the dam proved to be a slope about fifty feet long. A man in charge of the machinery controlling the gates told me that the dam lacked seven feet of being a mile wide, and that approximately seven feet of water was going over the entire dam.

Great cement blocks and rocks had been dropped promiscuously below the dam to prevent it from being undermined. Even without the rocks it was doubtful if an uncovered boat could go through without upsetting. The great force of the water made a trough four or five feet lower than the river level, all water coming down the slope shooting underneath, while the river rolled back upstream. On two occasions boatmen had been carried over the dam. In each case the boat was wrecked, but the occupants were thrown out and escaped uninjured. I could not help but be amused, and feel a little uncomfortable too, when I saw how nearly I came to being wrecked here, after having escaped that fate in the rapids of the canyons.

I ran my boat back to the diverting canal, then rowed down to the massive cement gates, which looked to me like a small replica of some of the locks on the Panama Canal. With the help of an Indian who was ready for a job my boat was taken out, rolled around the buildings on some sections of pipe, and slid over the bank into the canal below the gates.