Marble Canyon.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
The next day was begun by accomplishing the portage over the rapid which had punished the prospectors for their temerity and for their lack of proper morals, and then we made most excellent progress, successfully putting behind us eleven lively rapids free from rocks before we were admonished to pause and make a let-down. Then camp was established for the night with the record of ten and three-eighths miles for our day’s work. At one place we passed a rock in the water so large that it almost blocked the entire stream, which had averaged about two hundred feet in width, though narrowing at many places to no more than seventy-five. The current was always extremely swift, while many whirlpools added their demands, though they gave us no serious trouble. It is exasperating, however, to be turned around against one’s will. The canyon at the top for a considerable distance was not over three-quarters of a mile wide. The depth was now from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred feet. There were always rapids following quickly one after another, but so often they were free from rocks, the dangerous part of most rapids, that we were able to sail through them in triumph. On the 20th, out of thirteen sharp descents, we easily ran twelve, all in a distance of less than seven miles. The average width of the river was one hundred and twenty-five feet, while the walls rose to over two thousand feet, and at the top the canyon was about a mile and a quarter from brink to brink. This brought us to Vasey’s Paradise, so named after a botanist friend of his, by Powell on the first descent. It was only a lot of ferns, mosses, and similar plants growing around two springs that issued from the cliffs on the right about seventy-five feet above the river, and rippled in silver threads to the bottom, but as it was the first green spot since leaving the Paria its appearance was striking and attractive to the eye that had been baffled in all directions except above, in a search for something besides red. Now the narrow, terraced canyon, often vertical on both sides for several hundred feet above the water, grew ever deeper and deeper, two thousand, twenty-five hundred, three thousand feet and more, as the impetuous torrent slashed its way down, till it finally seemed to me as if we were actually sailing into the inner heart of the world. The sensation on the first expedition, when each dark new bend was a dark new mystery, must have been something to quite overpower the imagination, for then it was not known that, by good management, a boat could pass through this Valley of the Shadow of Death, and survive. Down, and down, and ever down, roaring and leaping and throwing its spiteful spray against the hampering rocks the terrible river ran, carrying our boats along with it like little wisps of straw in the midst of a Niagara, the terraced walls around us sometimes fantastically eroded into galleries, balconies, alcoves, and Gothic caves that lent to them an additional weird and wonderful aspect, while the reverberating turmoil of the ever-descending flood was like some extravagant musical accompaniment to the extraordinary panorama flitting past of rock sculpture and bounding cliffs.
The 22d was a day to be particularly remembered, for the walls, though more broken at the water’s edge, were now some thirty-five hundred feet high and seemed to be increasing by leaps and bounds, for at one place, through a side gorge on the right, we could discern cliffs so far above our heads that tall pine trees looked no larger than lead pencils. It was the end of the Kaibab, whose summit was more than five thousand feet higher than the river at this point. Cataract followed rapid and rapid followed cataract as we were hurled on down through the midst of the sublimity, which, parting at our advance, closed again behind like some wonderful phantasmagoria. At times in the headlong rush the boats could barely be held in control. Once, a wild mass of breakers appeared immediately in the path of our boat, from which it was impossible to escape, even though we made a severe effort to do so. We thought we were surely to be crushed, and I shall not forget the seconds that passed as we waited for the collision which never came, for when the boat dashed into the midst of the spray, there was no shock whatever; we glided through as if on oil,—the rocks were too far beneath the surface to harm us. So constant was the rush of the descending waters that our oars were needed only for guidance.
Marble Canyon near the Lower End.
Walls about 3500 feet.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.
Late in the day there came a long straight stretch, at the bottom of which the river appeared to vanish. Had any one said the course was now underground from that point onward, it would have seemed entirely appropriate. In the outer world the sun was low, though it had long been gone to us, and the blue haze of approaching night was drawing a veil of strange uncertainty among the cliffs, while far above, the upper portions of the mighty eastern walls, at all times of gorgeous hue, were now beautifully enriched by the last hot radiance of the western sky. Such a view as this was worth all the labour we had accomplished. When the end of this marvellous piece of canyon was reached a small river was found to enter on the left through a narrow gorge like the main canyon. It was the Little Colorado, and beside it on a sand-bank we stopped for the night, having ended one of the finest runs of our experience, about eighteen miles with but a single let-down; yet in this distance there were eighteen rapids, one of which was about two and one half miles long. It was a glorious record, and I do not recall another day which was more exhilarating. We had arrived at the end of Marble Canyon and the beginning of the Grand Canyon, there being nothing to mark the division but the narrow gorge of the Little Colorado. In Marble Canyon we had found sixty-nine rapids in the sixty-five and one half miles, with a total descent of 480 feet. Of these we ran sixty, let down by lines five times, and made four portages. Here at the mouth of the Little Colorado was the place where White’s imagination pictured overwhelming terrors and his worst experience in a whirlpool opposite. But in reality the Colorado at this particular point is very tame, and when we were there the Little Colorado was a lamb.
Now the Grand Canyon, as named by Powell on his former trip, was before us, and soon we were descending through the incomparable chasm. Three or four miles below the Little Colorado the walls break away, and the canyon has more the appearance of a valley hemmed in by beetling cliffs and crags which rise up in all directions over 5000 feet, distant from the line of the river five or six miles. On the right were two minor valleys within the canyon called Nancoweap and Kwagunt, named by Powell after the Pai Utes, who have trails coming down into them.[[1]]
[1] Kwagunt was the name of a Pai Ute who said he owned this valley—that his father, who used to live there, had given it to him.