Colorado River White Salmon.
Photograph by the Denver, Colorado Canyon, and Pacific Railway Survey under Robert Brewster Stanton, 1889.
On Tuesday, August 29th, the third day of our waiting, as we were about to return to various occupations after dinner three rapid shots broke suddenly on the quiet air from down the valley. It was our signal. "The Major" cried all in a breath, and a reply signal was instantly fired. Clem and I were sent immediately to the end of the island, carrying our rifles, of course, for while we had little doubt as to who it was, there might be a surprise. We hurried down while the others watched the bank beyond. As soon as we cleared the bushes and could see the western shore we distinguished the Major and a stranger by his side, with horses. We shouted to them directions for reaching our camp and they rode up till they came opposite to it whence they were ferried over while Jones took the horses down to their camp about four miles below. The Major reported an absolute failure in the attempt to find a way to the mouth of the Dirty Devil River and he had not himself been able to do anything about it. The first trial was eastward from Glencove, a Mormon settlement on the Sevier. It failed because the Indian guides refused to proceed beyond fifty miles and it was not practicable to go on without them. A second party was then sent in a little later under Old Jacob north-eastward from Kanab. They reached a river flowing to the Colorado at about the right place and for many miles followed it with extreme difficulty and hazard even at the low stage of water prevailing, down through a deep, narrow canyon. Sometimes they were compelled to swim their horses where the rapid stream filled the chasm from wall to wall, and continual crossing and re-crossing were necessary from one footing to another. This perilous effort was also abandoned. The Major had gone to Salt Lake and from there, being informed of these results, down to a village called Manti whence he made his way across country to our present position, with several pack animals bringing three hundred pounds of flour, a quantity of jerked beef, and twenty pounds of sugar. This was not exactly adequate to the circumstances but he probably thought it was all he could get through with to the meeting place appointed in the time alloted. While he and Fred Hamblin, the man accompanying him, were eating their dinner, we packed the boats, and when all was ready took them on board, the Major in his old place in the armchair on our boat, and Hamblin on the middle deck of another. In the run down to the camp Hamblin was very uncomfortable for he was not accustomed to boats, especially to boats that ran so fast. There were two little rapids, some swift chutes, and in several places the river shoaled and we grated slightly on the gravel.
Stretching away westward from Gunnison Butte we saw an exquisitely modelled line of cliffs, some portions being a clear azure blue. At first it was proposed to name them Henry Cliffs, but they were finally called from their colour, Azure. Presently we arrived at the camp where we found another man, Lyman Hamblin, a son of Jacob and nephew of Fred. They were both Mormons from Kanab near the Arizona line in southern Utah. They had a large amount of mail for us and every one fell to reading letters and papers. August 30th and 31st were spent here getting our work in shape, making sketches and observations, as well as writing letters and helping the Hamblins prepare for their trip back through the wild country. They had met with no Indians on the way in and they hoped to be equally fortunate going back having no desire to see any. In this, as they told me afterwards, they were not successful. They mounted their horses, Friday, September 1st, about four in the afternoon when the west was taking on a rich evening glow and turning in that direction vanished, with a wave of the hand and a good-bye, into the mystery of colour, bearing our letters, the geographic data, the geologic notes, and all the other material which we had collected since leaving the mouth of the Uinta, and which it was thought advisable to send out both for safety and to relieve our crowded cabins. They said that the next evening before they realised it they found themselves so near a large encampment of Indians that there was no getting away, and they did the only thing they could sensibly do, rode boldly on straight into the midst of the strangers with the hope that the band belonged where they were on the west side of the river, in which case they were surely peaceful. Both men spoke Ute well and they had had long experience. The Indians proved to be entirely friendly, and the Hamblins camped with them for the night; not because they wanted to but because they thought it inexpedient to do otherwise. When they left us we felt that they were old friends for they were fine men and most agreeable. Besides, with the exception of Basor who had driven the team down from Salt Lake to the Uinta with our rations, they were the only white men which those of us who had not visited the Uinta Agency had seen since the Harrells in Brown's Park, nearly three months before. An hour after their departure we pushed off and ran down about half a mile, passing one little rapid, to the old crossing where we stopped on the left for the night. Beaman and I were commissioned to go back to our Camp Gunnison to get a saw which had been forgotten there; we could not afford to lose so valuable an implement. A well-beaten Indian trail leading up the river gave us easy going and we made good time. The effects of light and colour all around us playing over the mountains and valley gave the surroundings a weird interest. The day was ending. Long shadows stole across the strange topography while the lights on the variegated buttes became kaleidoscopic. As for us, we appeared ridiculously inadequate. We ought to have been at least twenty feet high to fit the hour and the scene. Gradually the lights faded, the shadows faded, then both began to merge till a soft grey-blue dropped over all blending into the sky everywhere except west where the burnish of sunset remained. Before dark the old camp was reached; we found the saw by the last dying rays and then picked our backward path by starlight following the trail as we had come. Silence and the night were one as in the countless years that had carved the dim buttes from the rocks of the world primeval when man was not. Beautiful is the wilderness at all times, at all times lovely, but under the spell of the twilight it seems to enfold one in a tender embrace, pushing back the sordid, the commonplace, and obliterating those magnified nothings that form the weary burden of civilised man. With keen appreciation we tramped steadily on till at last we perceived through the night gloom the cheerful flicker of our camp-fire, a sight always welcome, for the camp-fire to the explorer is home.
At eight the next morning our business was resumed with the Major happy in his accustomed place. We made a nice run of eighteen miles on a smooth, shallow river, with broken, picturesque low cliffs and isolated buttes everywhere. The valley was wide and filled with these rocky hills. For a quarter of a mile on each side of the river there were cottonwood groves offering fine spots for camping, before and after crossing. There seemed to be several places where crossing was accomplished. At one of these we discovered where some Indians had been in camp a few hours before. The placidity of the river permitted the lashing together of the boats once more for a time and while we drifted this way down with the easy current the Major and Prof. took turns at reading aloud from Whittier. Mogg Megone was one selection that was quite in harmony with the surroundings while other poems offered a delightful contrast. There were songs, too, and I specially identify with this particular locality that old college favourite, Dear Evelina, Sweet Evelina which everybody sang, and which the Major often sang alone as he peered ahead into the vista unfolding.
Before night the valley narrowed, the banks looked more like low canyon walls, and the current stiffened. A clump of small cottonwoods suggested a camp as the sun ran down and there we halted. Nor did we go on the next day as the Major desired to go out to a ridge lying to the west, which he had seen from his horse on his way to us across country. Jones went with him and they came back with a fine collection of Cretaceous fossils. Steward and Cap. also went collecting and were successful. Our surroundings were now even more peculiar than heretofore. In many places the region was absolutely barren of all vegetation; thousands of acres at a time had upon them hardly a living plant of any description, being simply bare and barren rock, as devoid of soil as the deck of a ship. Prof. took observations for latitude and longitude and the rest of us were busy at our usual affairs. We had very little time to spare when the various necessary duties had been regularly attended to.
Dellenbaugh Butte.