We now had no further work for this immediate locality, and concluded to run down a mile or so to separate ourselves from the Navajos, one having disclosed a tendency to surreptitiously appropriate small articles belonging to us. A bed was made on the middle deck of one of the boats for Steward, and when all was ready we carried him down to it. The Navajos ranged themselves along the bank to see us off, and Clem, with his customary urbanity, went down the line all smiles, shaking each one cordially by the hand, and requesting him to "Give my love to all the folks at home," and "Remember me, please, to Eliza Jane," and similar expressions. The Navajos did not understand the words, but being themselves great jokers they saw that it was fun, and they all laughed, making remarks which doubtless were of the same kind. Just below was El Vado de los Padres by which these Navajos had now come across. It was also sometimes called the Ute Ford. The necessary route was indicated by a line of small piles of stones showing above water. It was not an easy crossing, feasible only at low water, and quite impossible for waggons, even had there been a road to it. A shoal was followed up the middle of the river half a mile with deep channels cutting through it, reached from the south over a steep slope of bare sandstone and from the north through a very narrow, small canyon, not over ten feet wide. Escalante in 1776, after the failure of his attempt to reach California, had great difficulty in finding the place, which for centuries has been known to all the tribes of the region. About three miles below our last camp we landed on the left on a very pretty piece of bottom land, inaccessible except by river, being bounded behind by a high, vertical, unscalable wall. Here we made Camp 80, with plenty of food, water, and wood, and all were comfortable by a fine fire; all but Steward, who, feeling very sick, was lying on the bed we had prepared for him. He had another bad night, but after this his condition seemed gradually to improve.
Glen Canyon.
Sentinel Rock—about 300 Feet High.
Photograph by E. O. Beaman, 1871.
Prof.'s favourite quotation now was Charles Fenno Hoffman's poem:
"We were not many—we who stood
Before the iron sleet that day;
Yet many a gallant spirit would
Give half his years if but he could
Have been with us at Monterey."
In the morning he went with Jones across the river and climbed out while the rest of us did nothing but lie around camp doing what was possible to make Steward comfortable. It was Sunday as well and whenever practicable we rested the whole or part of that day. Monday we started late and ran only a short distance before dinner which we ate on the right. Steward still was unable to sit up and he was carried on the middle deck of the Nell where he had a rope to cling to so that he should not roll off into the water when the boat lurched. Toward evening we camped at the head of a small rapid near a fine little stream coming in from the left which we named Navajo Creek. The river was about four hundred feet wide with walls on each side of four hundred feet in height. The next morning Prof., Cap. and I climbed out for bearings reaching an altitude a mile or so back from the river of 875 feet. Everywhere we discovered broken pottery, fragments of arrow-heads, and other evidences of former Shinumo occupancy. Even granting only a few persons at each possible locality, the canyons of the Colorado and Green must have been the former home of a rather large population. In the afternoon we ran the little rapid and kept on for about six miles making twenty in all from El Vado, when we camped on a heavy talus on the left. The following morning, October 18th, we had not gone more than a mile when we came to a singular freak of erosion, a lone sandstone pinnacle on the right, three hundred or four hundred feet high, the river running on one side and a beautiful creek eight feet wide on the other. We named these Sentinel Rock and Sentinel Creek and camped there for Beaman to get some photographs. Prof. and I went up the creek and tried to climb out for observations, but though we made three separate attempts we had to give it up. Steward grew so much better that he was able to walk a little, but now Jones began to feel more pain in his injured leg. On Thursday, the 19th, we made nearly seven miles between walls about eight hundred feet high and one quarter of a mile apart, so nearly vertical that we could not get out.
The next day we ran six miles more with walls one thousand feet high, camping at a place where there was a wide bottom with many signs of old native camps, probably Navajo. In the morning Prof., Cap., and I climbed a steep slope of bright orange sand a little below our camp, a rather hard task as the sand was loose, causing us to slip backward at every step. After twelve hundred or fifteen hundred feet of this kind of climbing we reached the base of three rocky peaks several hundred feet higher. We had considerable difficulty in surmounting one of these, being forced around to the opposite side, where there was a sheer descent from our position of some fifteen hundred feet, with sharp black rocks at the bottom where any one slipping would fall. There were some narrow transverse crevices in the rock by means of which we got up. One man, having been pushed aloft from the solid ledge by the two below, would lie back against the slope, brace himself with one heel in a transverse fissure, and lower the free foot as a handhold for the others to mount by. The next trouble was a crevice wide enough for us to pass through to the top, but holding exactly midway a large rock lodged in such a manner that we could not crawl under and yet seeming in danger of rolling down if we went over it. It was precarious not only for the man ahead who tried to pass but for those below waiting for results, but it was more firmly wedged than it appeared to be and each one in turn climbed over it. Emerging from this crack we were on the summit 2190 feet above the river and 5360 above the sea, with standing room no more than six or eight feet square. The view was superb. The peaks formed the northern end of a long line of cliffs running back to the south at the end of Glen Canyon, and we looked out across a wonderful region, part of that on the south being the "Painted Desert," so called by Ives. Mountains solid and solitary rose up here and there and line upon line of strangely coloured cliffs broke across the wide area, while from our feet stretching off to the south-west like a great dark dragon extending miles into the blue was the deep gorge of Marble Canyon, its tributary chasms appearing like mighty sprawling legs. Far away west were the San Francisco Mountains, and the Kaibab, while behind we saw Navajo Mountain and others.
This peak, or cluster of peaks, of course had never been named, had never been climbed before, but they soon named themselves. For amusement I tried to shoot into the river with Cap.'s 44 Remington revolver. As I pulled the trigger the noise was absolutely staggering. The violent report was followed by dead silence. While we were remarking the intensity of the crash, from far away on some distant cliffs northward the sound waves were hurled back to us with a rattle like that of musketry. We tried again with the same result, the interval between the great roar and the echo being twenty-four seconds by the watch. We could call the place nothing but Echo Peaks, and since then the name has been applied also to the line of cliffs breaking to the south. Our descent was easy and we reached camp without any incident except the loss of my sheath knife.