Split Mountain Canyon.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, 1871.
Wet and weary we welcomed the order to camp, about five o'clock, and made ourselves comfortable with dry clothes from our rubber bags, the wet ones being spread, as was our custom, on rocks to dry. At high water many of these rapids would be rendered much easier. A quarter of a mile below camp was a small cave thirty or forty feet deep, very picturesque, with the river dashing into it, and in the water in front a rock twenty feet high, which had dropped down from somewhere above. Beaman got a very good picture here.
The river was falling fast and as the water lowered rocks more and more showed themselves in the rapids. Low water increases the labour but it increases the safety as well, for the velocity is less and the boats are more easily controlled.
The next day, July 10th, we did not start on down the river till one o'clock. Then we lowered the boats past two rapids and ran six, of which four were very bad on account of numerous rocks. Occasionally a boat would strike but none was injured seriously. The sun was directly in our faces blinding us, and a high wind was blowing which added to the difficulties. The walls were often vertical for a thousand feet or more, and the river was wide and shallow. There was a scorching hot sun, the temperature being near 100 in the shade. The rocks and even the sand became so hot that they were uncomfortable to the touch, but there was one advantage in this dry heat—our clothes were soon dry. During this day we landed on the wrong side to examine one rapid and had to run it from there. Both boats got through with only slight raps and we went on a short distance to camp at the head of a bad descent which was not runable at this stage of water. In the morning a line-portage was easily accomplished and we ran down a short distance farther when we stopped for dinner on a sandy beach. The sand scorched my feet for I had been without shoes for several days. All our shoes were giving out and mine were the first to go completely. Fortunately Beaman had an extra pair of army brogans which he lent me till we should reach Uinta. I had ordered, by advice in Chicago, two pairs of fine shoes at thirteen dollars a pair, but I now discovered that I ought to have bought shoes at two dollars instead for such work as this. We hoped to be able to get some new shoes from Salt Lake when we reached the Uinta River and again would be in touch, even though a very long touch, with the outside world. Our soap was all gone too, and supplies of every kind were getting low.
In the afternoon three more rapids were run and at a fourth we were compelled to make a line-portage. Then we saw the strata begin to curve over and down and finally drop into the river just as they had come out of it at the beginning. The crevices were filled with ferns and in places clear water was dripping from these little green cliff gardens. As we ran along the foot of the left wall we saw a peculiar and beautiful spring which had carved out a dainty basin where a multitude of ferns and kindred plants were thriving, a silvery rill dropping down from them. We emerged from the canyon as abruptly as we had entered it, and saw a broad valley stretching before us. Running a quarter of a mile on a smooth river camp was made on the right on a level floor carpeted with grass and surrounded by thickets of oak. We were in the beginning of what is now called Wonsits (Antelope) Valley, about eighty-seven miles long, the only large valley on the river above the end of Black Canyon. Split-Mountain Canyon eight miles long has one of the greatest declivities on the river, coming next to Lodore, though it differs from the latter in that the descent is more continuous and not broken into short, violent stretches. There would be plain sailing now to the head of the Canyon of Desolation.
