The Grand Canyon.

At a Rapid—Low Water.

We were in the field to accomplish certain work and not to perform a spectacular feat, and the Major and Prof. having decided that the descent of the remainder of the canyon, considering all the circumstances, was for us impracticable and unnecessary, we prepared to leave for Kanab. We unpacked the good old boats rather reluctantly. They had come to possess a personality as such inanimate objects will, having been our faithful companions and our reliance for many a hundred difficult miles, and it seemed like desertion to abandon them so carelessly to destruction. We ought to have had a funeral pyre. The flags of the boats, which Mrs. Thompson had made and which had been carried in them the entire way, were still to be disposed of, and that of the Dean was generously voted to me by the Major, Jack, and Jones, who had crew claims to it; that of the Nellie Powell was awarded to Steward; while Clem received the Cañonita's. I tried to persuade the Major to pack the Dean out in sections and send her east to be kept as a souvenir of the voyage, but he would not then listen to it, though years later he admitted that he regretted not taking my suggestion. Three years afterward I came back to this place with my own party and would then have executed my desire, but no trace of our former outfit remained except a hatch from one of the middle cabins, and the Major's chair. The latter I carried to Salt Lake, where I presented it to Cap, who was living there.

As before mentioned, the Colorado was so extremely high that the water backed up into the Kanab Canyon, and it was there that we left the boats, each tied to an oar stuck in the ground.[36] We could not get all the goods on the horses of the pack-train, and left a portion to be brought out later. Jack and Clem remained to make photographs, and taking a last look at the boats, with a good-bye to all, we turned our faces up the narrow chasm of the Kanab. A small stream ran in the bottom, and this formed large pools amongst numerous ponderous boulders that had fallen in from the top of the walls some three thousand feet above our heads, the bottom being hardly more than sixty to seventy-five feet wide. It was with considerable difficulty that we got the animals past some of these places, and in one or two the pools were so long and deep they had to swim a little. The prospectors the year before had worked a trail to some extent, but here, where the floods ran high at times, changes occurred frequently. By five o'clock we had gone about eight miles up this slow, rough way, and arrived at a singular spring, where we went into camp. This we called Shower-Bath Spring. The water charged with lime had built out from the wall a semi-circular mass covered by ferns, which was cut away below by the floods till one could walk under in the sprinkling streams percolating through it. It was a very pretty place, but like all of its kind in the deep gorges it was a favourite resort for tarantulas, many of which we had seen in the depths of the Grand Canyon. These, with scorpions, rattlesnakes, and Gila-monsters, were the poisonous reptiles of the gorge.

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B. Preliminary map of a portion of the southern part of the unknown country indicated by the blank space on Map [A] at page 95, showing the Hurricane Ledge, Uinkaret and Shewits Mountains, and the course of the Grand Canyon from the mouth of Kanab Canyon to the Grand Wash. The Howlands and Dunn left the first expedition at Catastrophe Rapid, at the sharp bend a few miles below the intersection of the river and longitude 113° 30', climbed out to the north, and were killed near Mt. Dellenbaugh.

The next morning, Tuesday, the 10th of September, our pack-train was early on the way. The walls grew somewhat lower, though still two thousand feet high, and the canyon was usually seventy-five to one hundred feet wide at the bottom. There were patches of alluvial deposit now along the sides of the watercourse, covered by fields of cactus loaded with "apples," the prickly leaves compelling us to keep the trail the prospectors had made by their passage to and from the ephemeral Eldorado. After a time we emerged from the lower canyon into a wider one in the way previously described; that is, like going from one floor to another by an incline between narrow walls. The little stream having vanished, a pool of rain-water helped us out for dinner, and while it was preparing Prof. and I climbed up to secure notes on the topography. A trifle before sunset we arrived at the cedar tree, a short distance below the mouth of the Shinumo Canyon, where our party had camped the previous March. The pockets were full of clear, fresh water, and we had plenty for horses as well as men. Not far off some human bones were found, old and bleached. We thought they must be the remains of one of the Navajo raiders who escaped wounded from the Mormon attack near this locality. The canyon bottom was quite wide at this point and comparatively level, covered by rushes and grass, and the horses were able to get a good meal.

During the day every time I dismounted to take compass bearings on the trail I felt a sharp, peculiar pain shoot up my right leg from in front about half-way between ankle and knee. I could only discover a small red spot at the initial point, and concluded that I must have struck a sharp rock or cactus spine. Our party now again divided, the Major and Jones going up Shinumo Canyon to the Kaibab region, while Prof. and I rode on up the Kanab Canyon, starting at eight o'clock in the morning, Wednesday, September 11th, and riding steadily all day. As we had not expected to come out in this way saddles were scarce. Prof. and the Major had two of the three used by the packers, while the third was awarded to Jones, who was to have a long ride on the Kaibab trip. The rest of us had to make shift as we could, and I rigged up a "sawbuck" pack-saddle, with rope loops for stirrups and a blanket across it to sit on. This was not much better than, or as good perhaps as, bareback, and the horse was a very hard trotter. We wished to reach Kanab that night. We kept on at as rapid a gait as the canyon would permit, though it was easier than in March, when the numerous miners had not yet broken a way by their ingress and egress in search of the fabulous gold that was supposed to exist somewhere in the inaccessibility of the great chasm. The harder a locality is to arrive at the bigger the stories of its wealth, while often in the attempts to reach it the prospector treads heedlessly ground that holds fortunes up to his very eyes. We continued straight up Kanab Canyon, the walls running lower and lower, till there was nothing but rounded hills. Then we emerged on the summit, which was a valley bottom, about twenty miles from Kanab. Shortly after dark we halted for a bite to eat and a brief rest before striking for our old storehouse, a log cabin in Jacob's corral, where we arrived about eleven o'clock, having made about forty miles. I collected all the blankets I could find, and, throwing them on the inside of Jacob's garden fence, I was almost immediately asleep, and knew nothing till Jacob came along and said a "Good-morning." My ablutions over, I went to Sister Louisa's to breakfast with Prof. and Mrs. Thompson. The gardens were now yielding an abundance of fresh fruits, peaches, melons, etc., and I blessed the good management and foresight that directed the immediate planting of these things in a Mormon settlement. It seemed as if I could not get my fill.