Mukoontuweap Canyon, North Fork of the Virgen.
Ten miles long, 3500 feet deep.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Geol. Survey.
Looking down the Canyon de Chelly, a Tributary of the San Juan and Containing many Cliff Houses.
Photograph by BEN WITTICK.
On March 25th the preliminary party, consisting of F. M. Brown, F. C. Kendrick, chief engineer, and T. P. Rigney, assistant engineer, left Denver for Grand Junction, a station on the Rio Grande Western (near the C of Colorado, State name on map, p. 51), and the next morning set the first stake for the new railway which was to cost the president so dear. Then they bought a boat from the ferryman, and after repairing it laid in a supply of rations, engaged some men, and ran a half-mile down Grand River. Brown then left to go East in order to perfect his arrangements for this attempt to survey a railway route through the dangerous canyons. The boat party continued down Grand River to the head of the canyon, twenty-four miles, and then more slowly descended over rougher water, averaging five or six miles a day. At a distance of forty-three miles from the start the rapids grew very bad, and at one place they were forced to make a portage for twelve miles. At the end of one hundred miles they came to the little Mormon settlement of Moab. From here to the Junction of the Grand and Green was a distance of sixty miles, and the water was the same as it is just above the Junction, in the canyons of the Green, Stillwater, and Labyrinth, that is, comparatively smooth and offering no obstacles except a rather swift current. Nowhere had the cliffs risen above one thousand feet, and the river had an average fall of five feet to the mile. This was the first party on record to navigate, for any considerable distance, the canyons of Grand River. From the Junction they proceeded up the Green, towing the boat, desiring to reach the Rio Grande Western Railway crossing, one hundred and twenty miles away. By this time their rations were much diminished and they allowed themselves each day only one-half the ordinary amount, at the same time going on up the river as fast as possible, yet at the end of about eight days, when still thirty miles from their destination, they were reduced to their last meal. Fortunately they then arrived at the cabin of some cattlemen, Wheeler Brothers, who, discovering their plight, put their own ample larder, with true Western hospitality, at the surveyors’ disposal. Thus opportunely fortified and refreshed, the men reached the railway crossing the following night.
In reviewing all the early travels through this inhospitable region, one is struck by the frequent neglect of the question of food-supplies. In such a barren land, this is the item of first importance, and yet many of the leaders treated it apparently as of slight consequence. Great discomfort and suffering and death often followed a failure to provide proper supplies, or, when provided, to take sufficient care to preserve them.
On the 25th of May, 1889, Brown’s party was ready and started from the point where the Rio Grande Western crosses Green River. There were sixteen men and six boats. Five of the boats were new; the sixth was the one Kendrick and Rigney had used on the Grand River trip. The chief engineer of the proposed railway was Robert Brewster Stanton, and that he was not in the very beginning given the entire management was most unfortunate, for Brown himself seems not to have had a realisation of the enormous difficulties of the task before him. But the arrangements were completed before Stanton was engaged. All the men were surprised, disappointed, dismayed, at the character of the boats Brown had provided for this dangerous enterprise, and Stanton said his heart sank at the first sight of them. They were entirely inadequate, built of cedar instead of oak, only fifteen feet long and three feet wide, and weighed but one hundred and fifty pounds each. They would have been beautiful for an ordinary river, but for the raging, plunging, tumultuous Colorado their name was suicide. Then not a life-preserver had been brought. This neglect was another shock to the members of the party and their friends. Stanton was urged to take one for himself, but he declined to provide this advantage over the other men. Since then he has been disposed to blame Powell for not telling Brown that life-preservers are a necessity on the Colorado. It was also said that Powell declared to Brown that they were not imperative and consequently he is censured for the subsequent disasters. There was certainly a misunderstanding in this, for Powell, knowing the situation from such abundant experience, never could have said life-preservers were not necessary, though on his first trip there was but one. In this connection Thompson writes me: “The Major sent for me at once when Mr. Brown called at the office. I think we talked—we three, I mean—for half an hour, then the Major said, ‘Professor Thompson knows just as much about the river as I do, and more about what is necessary for such a trip; you talk with him.’ I took Mr. Brown to my room and we had a long talk. I think the next day Mr. Brown came again. I had two interviews with him alone. I told him distinctly that life-preservers were necessary. I probably told him we did not wear them all the time, but I told him we put them on at every dangerous rapid, and I showed him the picture in the Major’s Report where we were wearing them. I clearly remember telling him to have one arm above and one below the preserver. I am positive about this, for after we received word of the loss of Brown we talked it over and I recalled the conversation. He impressed me as thinking we exaggerated the dangers of the river. He made a memorandum of things I said. I think he also talked with Hillers, and I have no doubt the latter told him to take life-preservers. But he had the Report, and there is no excuse for his neglecting so indispensable an article of the outfit. He was warned over and over again to neglect no precaution. I distinctly remember that the Major told him in so many words, ‘not to underestimate the dangers of the river, and to never be caught off guard.’” On a previous page I have remarked that proper boats and a knowledge of how to handle them are more important than life-preservers, but that does not mean that a party should leave the life-preservers behind. In descending the Colorado every possible precaution must be taken. The first of these is the right kind of boats, second, proper arrangement as to food-supplies, and, third, life-preservers, etc. The New York Tribune, after the collapse of this Brown expedition, quotes Powell in an interview as saying that he would not have ventured in the boats Brown selected and that he thought Brown “failed to comprehend the significant fact that nothing can get through the Colorado Canyon that cannot float. Boats are repeatedly upset and inferior boats are mashed like egg-shells.” Brown, undoubtedly, was rather inclined to look upon the descent somewhat lightly. Being a brave, energetic man it was hard for him to believe that this river demanded so much extra prudence and caution, when Powell had successfully descended it twice without, so far as the water was concerned, losing a man. However, the ill-fated expedition went on its way.
A Cave-Lake in a Sandstone Cliff near Kabab, S. Utah.
The depth from front to rear is about 125 feet. The outer opening is the whole front of the arch. It belongs to the class of natural arches, alcoves, bridges, “holes in the wall,” etc., common in this kind of sandstone throughout the Southwest.
Photograph by J.K. HILLERS, U.S. Colo. Riv. Exp.