The following day, October 13th, they reached the narrowest part of the river, a channel less than fifty feet wide, but the canyon on top is, of course, very broad. With many portages and other arduous toil the party slowly climbed up the river, sometimes making less than three miles, sometimes a little more. The rapids grew worse and worse, and the smooth stretches in between shorter and shorter. On the 15th Gilbert’s boat broke away, and he and Hecox were swept so far down the stream that the rest could not reach them. They were obliged to remain where they were through the night with nothing to eat. The main camp was at a place where there was barely room for the men to sleep amongst the rocks. They were all gloomy enough, and starvation was beginning to show its dreaded shadow amidst the spray. On the 16th they were compelled to carry the tow-line fully a hundred feet above the water to get it ahead. At another portage the rope broke and the boat was instantly thrown out into the rapid by the fierce current. Fortunately she was not capsized, and they managed again to secure her and make a second attempt, which succeeded. Climbing to the top of the granite they discovered it was comparatively level, and they believed they could travel over it, if necessary, as far as Diamond Creek. The rations for some time had to be dealt out on allowance, and at night, for safety, Wheeler put the entire stock under his head as a pillow. On the 17th they met with particularly bad rapids, one with a fall of ten and a half feet where the river was only thirty-five feet wide. The force of such pent-up waters may be imagined. The party had here one advantage over the river farther north, at this season; it was much warmer in this part of the Grand Canyon.
The Crew of the “Trilobite.”
At the mouth of Diamond Creek.
Photograph by T.H. O’SULLIVAN, Wheeler Exp.
“Each day,” writes Wheeler of this portion, “seems like an age, and the danger of complete disaster stares one so plainly in the face that a state of uneasiness naturally prevails.” On the 18th, at one of the descents, a boat was again torn loose, and Gilbert and Salmon were thrown into the raging waters. They fortunately succeeded in getting out, and the party pushed ahead, making three and one-half miles. The boats were now in a dilapidated condition, leaking badly. On October 19th two messengers were started, by way of the summit of the granite, to Diamond Creek to catch the relief party there, and return with some food. Meanwhile Wheeler planned, if no relief came, to abandon the river on the 22nd, but on the evening of that same day, having made six miles up the river, the party had the joy of finally reaching Diamond Creek with the two boats. Wheeler had succeeded in a well-nigh hopeless task. “The land party had left at ten in the morning,” so Gilbert writes me, “and their camp was reached by our messengers on foot at 1 p.m. These facts were announced to us by a note one of our messengers sent down the river on a float.” A number of the boat party were then sent out to the rendezvous camp, while the remainder turned about and began the perilous descent, having now to do just what would have been necessary if the start had been made from Diamond Creek. Mohave was reached in safety on the evening of the fifth day, whereas it had required about four weeks of extremely hard work to make the same distance against the current. This is all the comment necessary on the two methods. The whole party that reached Diamond Creek was as follows: Lieutenant Wheeler, G. K. Gilbert, P. W. Hamel, T. H. O’Sullivan, E. M. Richardson, Frank Hecox, Wm. George Salmon, R. W. James, Thos. Hoagland, George Phifer, Wm. Roberts, Privates Drew, Flynn, and Keegan, and six Mohaves, making twenty in all.
“The exploration of the Colorado River,” says Wheeler, “may now be considered complete.” The question may fairly be asked, Why was the exploration now any more complete than it was before Wheeler made this unnecessary trip? Powell, two years before, had been through the part ascended, and Wheeler, so far as I can determine, added little of value to what was known before. If he thought Powell had not completed the work of exploration, as his words imply, the exploration was still not complete, for there remained the distance to the Little Colorado, and to the Paria, and so on up to the source of the river, which Wheeler had not been over. If he accepted Powell’s exploration above Diamond Creek, why did he not accept it below? His nerve and luck in accomplishing the ascent to Diamond Creek deserve great praise, but the trip itself cannot be considered anything but a needless waste of energy.
The Dining-table in Camp.
Dutch oven, left foreground.
Photograph by F.S. DELLENBAUGH.
Meanwhile, as noted in the last chapter, our own party had passed the Crossing of the Fathers, had arrived at the mouth, of the Paria, and, according to our plans, had cached our boats there for the winter while we proceeded to inaugurate our land work of triangulation. A number of us were left for a while in camp in a valley lying between the Kaibab Plateau, then called Buckskin Mountain, and what is now called Paria Plateau, at a spring in a gulch of the Vermilion Cliffs. Two large rocks at this place had fallen together in such a way that one could crawl under for shelter. This was on the old trail leading from the Mormon settlements to the Moki country, travelled about once a year by Jacob Hamblin and a party on a trading expedition to the other side of the river. Somebody on one of these trips had taken refuge beneath this rock, and on departing had written, in a facetious mood, along the top with a piece of charcoal, “Rock House Hotel.” Naturally, in referring to the spring it was called, by the very few who knew it, Rock House Spring, and then the spring where the House Rock was, or House Rock Spring. From this came House Rock Valley, and the name was soon a fixture, and went on our maps. And thus easily are names established in a new country. All around were evidences of former occupation by the Puebloans, and I became greatly interested in examining the locality. At length, we were ordered across the Kaibab to the vicinity of Kanab, and I shall never fail to see distinctly the wonderful view from the summit we had of the bewildering cliff-land leading away northward to the Pink Cliffs. The lines of cliffs rose up like some giant stairway, while to the south-eastward the apparently level plain was separated by the dark line of Marble Canyon. On top of the plateau, which was covered with a fine growth of tall pines, we came about camping time to a shallow, open valley, where we decided to stay for the night. As it was on the top of the mountain Bishop recorded it in his notes as Summit Valley, and so it ever afterward remained. There was no spring, but a thin layer of snow eked out the water we had brought in kegs on the packs, and we and the animals were comfortable enough. The trail had not been travelled often, and was in places very dim, but we succeeded in following it without delay. The Kaibab, still frequently called the Buckskin Mountain, must have received this first name from its resemblance to a buckskin stretched out on the ground. The similarity is quite apparent in the relief map opposite page 41. As it was the home of the Kaibab band of Pai Utes, Powell decided to rename it after them. We arrived within eight miles of Kanab, where we made a headquarters camp at a fine spring, and trips from here and from a camp made later nearer Kanab were extended into the surrounding country. The Mormons had a year or two before come out from the St. George direction and established this new settlement of Kanab, composed then of a stockaded square of log houses and some few neat adobe houses outside; about fifty in all. The settlement was growing strong enough to scatter itself somewhat about the site marked off for the future town. One of the first things the Mormons always did in establishing a new settlement was to plant fruit and shade trees, and vines, and the like, so that in a very few years there was a condition of comfort only attained by a non-Mormon settlement after the lapse of a quarter of a century.