[14] It is here that the Denver and Rio Grande railway crossed, bridging the river in 1883. From here also the Brown Expedition started in May, 1889, and the Best Expedition in 1891.
[15] Many years afterward on a rock face half-way round this bend the inscription, D. Julien 1836 3 Mai, was found. The same inscription was also found in two other places just below the mouth of Grand River and near the end of Cataract Canyon.
CHAPTER IX
A Wonderland of Crags and Pinnacles—Poverty Rations—Fast and Furious Plunging Waters—Boulders Boom along the Bottom—Chilly Days and Shivering—A Wild Tumultuous Chasm—A Bad Passage by Twilight and a Tornado with a Picture Moonrise—Out of one Canyon into Another—At the Mouth of the Dirty Devil at Last.
We were on the threshold of what the Major had previously named Cataract Canyon, because the declivity within it is so great and the water descends with such tremendous velocity and continuity that he thought the term rapid failed to interpret the conditions. The addition of the almost equal volume of the Grand—indeed it was now a little greater owing to extra heavy rains along its course—doubled the depth and velocity of the river till it swirled on into the new canyon before us with a fierce, threatening intensity, sapping the flat sand-bank on which our camp was laid and rapidly eating it away. Large masses with a sudden splash would drop out of sight and dissolve like sugar in a cup of tea. We were obliged to be on the watch lest the moorings of the boats should be loosened, allowing them to sweep pell-mell before us down the gorge. The long ropes were carried back to their limit and made fast to stakes driven deep into the hard sand. Jack and I became dissatisfied with the position of our boat and dropped it down two or three hundred yards to a place where the conditions were better, and camped by it. There were a few small cottonwoods against the cliff behind the sand-bank, but they were too far off to be reached by our lines, and the ground beneath them was too irregular and rocky for a camp. These trees, with the hackberry trees across the river and numerous stramonium bushes in full blossom, composed the chief vegetation of this extraordinary locality. No more remote place existed at that time within the United States—no place more difficult of access. Macomb in his reconnaissance in 1859 had tried hard to arrive here, but he got no nearer than the edge of the plateau about thirty miles up Grand River.
It was necessary that we should secure topographic notes and observations from the summit, and we scanned the surroundings for the most promising place for exit. The Major was sure we could make a successful ascent to the upper regions by way of a narrow cleft on the right or west some distance back up the Green, which he had noted as we came along; so in the morning of Saturday, September 16th, he and Jack, Beaman, Clem, Jones, and I rowed up in the Cañonita, the current being slow along the west bank, and started up the crevice, dragging the cumbrous photographic outfit along. Prof. remained below for observations for time. The cleft was filled with fallen rocks, and we had no trouble mounting, except that the photographic boxes were like lead and the straps across one's chest made breathing difficult. The climb was tiring, but there was no obstacle, and we presently emerged on the surface of the country 1300 feet above the river and 5160 above the sea. Here was revealed a wide cyclorama that was astounding. Nothing was in sight but barren sandstone, red, yellow, brown, grey, carved into an amazing multitude of towers, buttes, spires, pinnacles, some of them several hundred feet high, and all shimmering under a dazzling sun. It was a marvellous mighty desert of bare rock, chiselled by the ages out of the foundations of the globe; fantastic, extraordinary, antediluvian, labyrinthian, and slashed in all directions by crevices; crevices wide, crevices narrow, crevices medium, some shallow, some dropping till a falling stone clanked resounding into the far hollow depths. Scarcely could we travel a hundred yards but we were compelled to leap some deep, dark crack. Often they were so wide a running jump was necessary, and at times the smooth rock sloped on both sides toward the crevice rather steeply. Once the Major came sliding down a bare slope till at a point where he caught sight of the edge of a sombre fissure just where he must land. He could not see its width; he could not return, and there he hung. Luckily I was where by another path I could quickly reach the rock below, and I saw that the crevice was not six inches wide, and I shouted the joyful news. Steward had not come up with us, but had succeeded in ascending through a narrow crevice below camp. He soon arrived within speaking distance, but there he was foiled by a crack too wide to jump, and he had to remain a stranger to us the rest of the day. At a little distance back from the brink these crevices were not so numerous nor so wide, and there we discovered a series of extremely pretty "parks" lost amidst the million turreted rocks. I made a pencil sketch looking out into this Sinav-to-weap, as the Major called it from information obtained from the Utes.[16] Beaman secured a number of photographs, but not all that were desired, and, as we did not have rations for stopping on the summit, we went back to camp and made the climb again the next day. Fortunately the recent rains had filled many hollows in the bare rock, forming pockets of delicious, pure water, where we could drink, but on a hot and dry summer's day travelling here would be intolerable, if not impossible. Fragments of arrow-heads, chips of chalcedony, and quantities of potsherds scattered around proved that our ancient Shinumos had known the region well. Doubtless some of their old trails would lead to large and deep water-pockets. There are pot-holes in this bare sandstone of enormous size, often several feet in depth and of similar diameter, which become filled with rain-water that lasts a long time. The Shinumos had numerous dwellings all through this country, with trails leading from place to place, highways and byways.