Our second day’s run was uneventful through a superb gorge about twenty-four hundred feet deep, and at a late hour in the afternoon, just after we had run our worst rapid in fine style, we perceived the great walls breaking away, and they soon melted off into rounded hills, exquisitely coloured, as if painted by Nature in imitation of the rainbow. The river spread out, between and around a large number of pretty islands bearing thick cottonwood groves. The shallowness of the water caused our keels to touch occasionally, but the current was comparatively slow and we were not disturbed over it. Powell hesitated as to calling this place Rainbow or Island Park, the choice eventually falling to the latter. The valley is only three or four miles long in a straight line. Shortly before sunset we had the disappointment of reaching the end of it, and immediately below the place where we camped the rocks closed sharply together once more. Here Powell determined that he would push ahead of the main party, in order to make his way, as soon as possible, to the Uinta Ute Agency, in order to communicate with the outer world and ascertain if his plans for supply-trains were moving on to success. He took the Dean, but Bishop was put in my place because of his considerable experience in the Western country, for there was no telling what they might encounter. On the morning of July 7th, at daybreak, therefore, they were off, and speedily disappeared from our sight within the rocks that arose below our camp. A number of the remaining men climbed to the top of the left-hand side of the “gate,” an altitude of about three thousand feet above camp, and from there were able to see the Emma Dean for a long distance, working down through the rapids. The view from that altitude over the surrounding country and into the canyon was something wonderful to behold. A wild and ragged wilderness stretched out in all directions, while down in the canyon—more of a narrow valley than a canyon after the entrance was passed—the river swept along, marked, here and there, by bars of white we knew to be rapids. Crags and pinnacles shot up from every hand, and from this circumstance it was at first uncertain whether to call the canyon Craggy or Split-Mountain. The latter was decided on, as the river has sawed in two a huge fold of the strata—a mountain split in twain. When we entered it with our boats to again descend, we had gone but a little distance before massive beds of solid rock came up straight out of the water on both sides and we were instantly sailing in a deep, narrow canyon, the beds at length arching over, down stream, high above our heads. It was an extraordinary sight. While we were looking at the section of the great fold, we discovered some mountain sheep far up the rocks. Though we fired at them the circumstances were against our hitting, and they scampered scornfully away from crag to crag, out of our sight. Then the canyon widened at the top, and at the same time rapids appeared. They came by dozens, but there were none that we could not master with certainty by hard work. Wet from head to foot we continued this labour for three days, and then the rocks, the “Ribbon Beds,” turned over and disappeared beneath the water just as they had come out of it above. The low stage of the river made this canyon difficult, so far as exertion was concerned, and the rapids would perhaps be far easier during the spring flood.
Men of the 1871 Expedition of an Abandoned Cabin Opposite the Mouth of the Uinta River.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
We were now in Wonsits Valley, the longest expansion of the walls above Black Canyon. Near our camp, which was on a soft, grassy bank beside smooth-flowing waters, some picture writings were found, the first indications, since the wreckage at Disaster Falls, outside of occasional signs of Powell’s other party, that human beings had ever been in the country. The tail-piece at the end of the preface to this volume is a reduction of a drawing I made of the largest figure, which was about four feet high. The river now flowed gently between low banks covered in many places with cottonwoods, and it required hard labour of a different kind to get the boats along. Signs of Utes began to appear, and one morning a fine fellow, gaily dressed, and mounted on a splendid horse, rode into camp with a “How—how!” Farther on we came to him again, with his squaw, a good-looking young woman, very well dressed in a sort of navy blue flannel, and wearing numerous ornaments. We ferried them across the river, and afterwards found they were runaways from White River,—an elopement in reality.
The Runaways. White River Utes.
Photograph by E.O. BEAMAN, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
