I refer to that portion of the Colorado, extending from near the confluence of Grand and Green rivers, which is known as the "Big Cañon of the Colorado." This cañon is without doubt one of the most stupendous freaks of nature that can be found upon the face of the earth. It appears that by some great paroxysmal, convulsive throe in the mysterious economy of the wise laws of nature, an elevated chain of mountains has been reft asunder, as if to admit a passage for the river along the level of the grade at the base. The walls of this majestic defile, so far as they have been seen, are nearly perpendicular; and although we have no exact data upon which to base a positive calculation of their altitude, yet our information is amply sufficient to warrant the assertion that it far exceeds anything of the kind elsewhere known.
The first published account of this remarkable defile was contained in the works of Castenada, giving a description of the expedition of Don Francisco Vasquez de Coronado in search of the "seven cities of Cibola"--in 1540-1.
He went from the city of Mexico to Sonora, and from thence penetrated to Cibola; and while there despatched an auxiliary expedition, under the command of Don Garcia Lopez de Cardenas, to explore a river which emptied into the Gulf of California, called "Rio del Tison," and which, of course, was the Rio Colorado.
On reaching the vicinity of the river, he found a race of natives, of very great stature, who lived in subterranean tenements covered with straw or grass. He says, when these Indians travelled in very cold weather, they carried in their hands a firebrand, with which they kept themselves warm.
Captain Sitgreaves, who in 1862 met the Mohave Indians on the Colorado river, says "they are over six feet tall;" and Mr. R. H. Kern, a very intelligent and reliable gentleman, who was attached to the same expedition, and visited the lower part of the great cañon of the Colorado, says: "The same manners and customs (as those described by Castenada) are peculiar to all the different tribes inhabiting the valley of the Colorado, even to the use of the brand for warming the body. These Indians, as a mass, are the largest and best-formed men I ever saw, their average height being an inch over six feet."
The Spanish explorer says he travelled for several days along the crest of the lofty bluff bordering the cañon, which he estimated to be three leagues high, and he found no place where he could pass down to the water from the summits. He once made the attempt at a place where but few obstacles seemed to interfere with the descent, and started three of his most active men. They were gone the greater part of the day, and on their return informed him that they had only succeeded in reaching a rock about one third the distance down. This rock, he says, appeared from the top of the cañon about six feet high, but they informed him that it was as high as the spire of the cathedral at Seville in Spain.
The river itself looked from the summit of the cañon, to be something like a fathom in width, but the Indians assured him it was half a league wide.
Antoine Lereux, one of the most reliable and best informed guides in New Mexico, told me in 1858, that he had once been at a point of this cañon where he estimated the walls to be three miles high.
Mr. Kern says, in speaking of the Colorado: "No other river in North America passes through a cañon equal in depth to the one alluded to. The description (Castenada's) is made out with rare truth and force. We had a view of it from the San Francisco mountain, N. M., and judging from our own elevation, and the character of the intervening country, I have no doubt the walls are at least fire thousand feet in height."