The line of ragged, roan-tinted, book-edged cliffs on the north, behind whose battlements stretched an invisible plateau of broken wilderness, covered with grass, but almost treeless and waterless, where the traveler must not leave the Indian trails,—this line of massive and vari-colored cliffs stretched all the way to Green river (and far beyond it,) rising there into the loftier and bluer bluffs which have been named Azure, and, in the sunlight, seemed carved from cobalt. Between their towering portals, through the corridors of Gray cañon, came the yellow flood of the Green river, sweeping with enormous power from north to south, and crossed by us toward midnight upon a long and lofty bridge. We looked down with eager eyes upon its swift flood of chocolate-colored water, half as broad as the Missouri—twice as deep and impetuous. We wished it had been daylight, that the pregnant mysteries of the half-darkness might be revealed, wherein distant forms full of curious interest were dimly suggested. They told us that here, at noonday, the passenger upon the railway can see the summits of the broken walls that form the Grand cañons of the Colorado, fifty miles to the south.
But all the “grand cañons” are not away in the southern drylands. The whole track of Green river from its birth to its death runs in gorges whose depth and splendor excite our amazement. There are few rivers in the world that have a history so striking; and if, as is fair, we count it one stream from the Wind River mountains to the Pacific, the mighty river is without a peer in its erosive work.
Its source is at the southwestern corner of Yellowstone park, in Wyoming; its mouth, two thousand miles southward, at the head of the Gulf of California. The present writer pens with gratification the record that he has seen both these points. Its upper course lies in open, or wooded valleys, where sparkling, trout-haunted rapids alternate with pools in whose mirror-smooth surface the images of fleecy clouds play with the tremulous forms of snowy peaks. Then it learns lessons for the hard-working future among the plains and buttes of southern Wyoming, cutting through its first obstacle where the Alcove bluffs rear their gaudy crests abreast of Bitter creek.
Here is a little village, settled long ago by emigrants and cattle-breeders, and here, in 1869, Major J. W. Powell, now Director of the United States Geological Survey, and chief of the Bureau of Ethnology, began his celebrated exploration of the river in small boats, which ultimately navigated all the thousand miles of almost continuous cañons that lay unexplored, uncanny and perilous before them. Wonderful stories of it were believed by the frontiersmen. Boats, they told Major Powell, had been carried into overwhelming whirlpools, or had been sucked with fearful velocity underground, never to reappear, for the river was lost in subterranean channels for hundreds of miles. Falls were reported, whose roaring music could be heard on distant mountain-tops; and the walls were so steep in the desert, that persons wandering on the brink had died of thirst, vainly endeavoring to reach the waters they could see below. The Indians believed the river had been rolled into an old trail that once led from their hard home to the beautiful balmy land of the Hereafter in the great west, in order to keep them away until death gave their release.
Undeterred by these tales, the explorers started. Their story has been told by Major Powell himself in his report to the government, and in magazine articles. Before him Macomb, Ives, and Newburry had seen the southern gorges; since then Dutton, Homes and others of the Geological Surveys have surveyed, mapped and sketched the strange scenery of that strange river. Yet to no one can anything but seeing with his own eyes bring more than the faintest conception of the reality. And here we are, at midnight, in the very midst of it—northward and southward lie the profound chasms, the immeasurable and uncountable cliffs;—under our feet flows the mighty river that carved them out and connects them into one.
What a voyage was that of Powell’s! The fantastic architecture of the Alcove foothills, with the gleaming points of the Uinta range in the south; the ever-changing panorama of the badlands—scenery for Hades; the vermillion gateway opened through the snow-capped mountains, called Flaming Gorge, where lies a vast amphi-theatre, each step built of naked red sandstone, and a glacis clothed with verdure! Then the cautious advance, after letting the unladen boats down with ropes over foaming rapids; threading gorge and cañon and flume, each characteristic in some new way, and separated by little parks and lowlands filled with trees and quaintly shaped rocks from the next; always hemmed in by lofty and brilliant walls; on to the Cañon of Lodore and Ashley’s Falls where years ago a party of men were drowned and where Powell loses one of his boats. “Just before us,” he says at one point, “the cañon divides, a little stream coming down on the right, and another on the left, and we can look away up either of these cañons, through an ascending vista, to cliffs and crags and towers, a mile back, and two thousand feet over head. To the right a dozen gleaming cascades are seen. Pines and firs stand on the rocks, and aspens overhang the brooks. The rocks below are red and brown, set in deep shadows, but above they are buff and vermillion, and stand in the sunshine. The light above, made more brilliant by the bright-tinted rocks, and the shadows below more gloomy by the somber hues of the brown walls, increase the apparent depth of the cañons.... Never before have I received such an impression of the vast heights of these cañon walls; not even at the Cliff of the Harp, where the very heavens seemed to rest on their summits.”
Below the Cañon of Lodore was found the wonderful Echo Rock, where the Yampa enters; next the Whirlpool, where the boats waltz down the tortuous and bowlder-strewn rapids in a merry dance of eddies over which the oars have no control. “What a headlong ride it is! Shooting past rocks and islands! I am soon filled with an exhilaration only experienced before in riding a fleet horse over the outstretched prairie.” Passing through the “broad, flaring, brilliant gateway” of Split mountain, and down a series of rapids in a more open region, the mouths of the White and Uinta rivers are passed, and the river brings them to the chaotic scenery of the Cañon of Desolation.
This cañon is very tortuous, and many lateral cañons enter on either side. The great plateau, in which they are sunken, extends across the river east and west from the foot of the Colorado Rockies to the base of the Wasatch. It is eight thousand feet above the sea, and therefore in a region of moisture, as is attested by the forests and grassy vales. On these high table lands elk and deer abound, and they are favorite hunting-grounds for the Utes, whose trails cross them. Nothing of this, however, is seen from the river level, where the voyager is surrounded by a wilderness of gray and brown crags. “In several places,” says Powell, “these lateral cañons are only separated from each other by narrow walls, often hundreds of feet high, but so narrow in places, that where softer rocks are found below, they have crumbled away and left holes in the wall, forming passages from one cañon into another.... Piles of broken rock lie against these walls; crags and tower-shaped peaks are seen everywhere; and away above them long lines of broken cliffs, and above and beyond the cliffs are pine forests.... A few dwarf bushes are seen here and there, and cedars grow from the crevices—not like the cedars of a land refreshed with rains, great cones bedecked with spray, but ugly clumps, like war clubs beset with spines.”
Various adventures carry the plucky party through and beyond this gorge down to where our railway bridge spans the river with its tenacious links. They note the existence of an Indian ferry of rude log-rafts somewhere near here, but there was nothing to induce their stoppage for more than a night. Now, those of us who are minded some day to behold the wild crags of Desolation cañon will reverse Major Powell’s course, and embarking at this railway station on the river bank go up the Green, through the Azure Cliffs and fifty miles beyond. Or, turning southward, our boat may equip itself for a longer journey, and our minds make ready for even more marvelous and memorable sights, in the profundities of the cañons of the Rio Colorado, below the junction of the Green and the Grand. If so long a journey is forbidden, there is much delight, with the advantage of easy and safe navigation, to be found between the railway and the mouth of Grand river.
A few miles after leaving the railway, downward bound, the voyager would get among curious bluffs and buttes that would interest him all the way to the mouth of the San Rafael, a strong tributary from the west, up which passed one of the principal overland trails from New Mexico to Utah. If he is interested in archæology, Indian “relics” in abundance will reward his search along the banks. The river is tortuous here, but deep and quiet. Sometimes there is a narrow flood-plain between the river and the wall on one side or the other, the peninsulas being pleasantly wooded. The walls are orange-colored sandstone, and vertical, but not very high. At one point, where the river sweeps around a curve under a cliff, a vast hollow dome may be seen, with many caves and deep alcoves. The doublings of the river are many; one loop carries you nine miles around, yet makes only six hundred yards of headway. Gradually the chasm of the river grows deeper; the walls are systematically curved and grandly arched; of beautiful color, and reflected in the quiet waters with deceiving distinctness.