The mountaineers in Utah told me that a party of trappers many years since built a large row-boat, and made the attempt to descend the river through the defile of the cañon, but were never heard from afterward. They probably dashed their boat in pieces, and were lost by being precipitated over sunken rocks or elevated falls.
In 185- Lieutenant Ives of the United States Engineers, was ordered to penetrate the cañon with a steamer of light draught. He ascended the river from the gulf as high as a little above the mouth of the gorge, but there encountered rapids and other obstacles of so serious a character that he was forced to turn back and abandon the enterprise, and no other efforts have since been made under government auspices to explore it.
A thorough examination of this cañon might, in my opinion, be made by taking small row-boats and ascending the river from the debouche of the gorge at a low stage of water. In this way there would be no danger of being carried over dangerous rapids or falls, and the boats could be carried round difficult passages. Such an exploration could not, in my judgment, prove otherwise than intensely interesting, as the scenery here must surpass in grandeur any other in the universe.
Wherever we find rivers flowing through similar formations elsewhere, as at the "dalles" of the Columbia and Wisconsin rivers, and in the great cañons of Red and Canadian rivers, although the escarpments at those places have nothing like the altitude of those upon the Colorado, yet the long continued erosive action of the water upon the rock, has produced the most novel and interesting combinations of beautiful pictures. Imagine, then, what must be the effect of a large stream like the Colorado, traversing for two hundred miles a defile with the perpendicular walls towering five thousand feet above the bed of the river. It is impossible that it should not contribute largely toward the formation of scenery surpassing in sublimity and picturesque character any other in the world. Our landscape painters would here find rare subjects for their study, and I venture to hope that the day is not far distant when some of the most enterprising of them may be induced to penetrate this new field of art in our only remaining unexplored territory. I am confident they would be abundantly rewarded for their trouble and exposure, and would find subjects for the exercise of genius, the sublimity of which the most vivid imaginations of the old masters never dreamed of.
A consideration, however, of vastly greater financial and national importance than those alluded to above, which might and probably would result from a thorough exploration of this part of the river, is the development of its mineral wealth.
In 1849 I met in Santa Fé that enterprising pioneer, Mr. F. X. Aubrey, who had just returned from California, and en route had crossed the Colorado near the outlet of the Big Cañon, where he met some Indians, with whom, as he informed me, he exchanged leaden for golden rifle-balls, and these Indians did not appear to have the slightest appreciation of the relative value of the two metals.
That gold and silver abound in that region is fully established, as those metals have been found in many localities both east and west of the Colorado. Is it not therefore probable that the walls of this gigantic crevice will exhibit many rich deposits? Companies are formed almost daily, and large amounts of money and labor expended in sinking shafts of one, two, and three hundred feet with the confident expectation of finding mineral deposits; but here nature has opened and exposed to view a continuous shaft two hundred miles in length, and five thousand feet in depth. In the one case we have a small shaft blasted out at great expense by manual labor, showing a surface of about thirty-six hundred feet, while here nature gratuitously exhibits ten thousand millions of feet, extending into the very bowels of the earth.
Is it, then, at all without the scope of rational conjecture to predict that such an immense development of the interior strata of the earth--such a huge gulch, if I may be allowed the expression, extending so great a distance through the heart of a country as rich as this in the precious metals, may yet prove to be the El Dorado which the early Spanish explorers so long and so fruitlessly sought for; and who knows but that the government might here find a source of revenue sufficient to liquidate our national debt?
Regarding the exploration of this river as highly important in a national aspect, I in 1858 submitted a paper upon the subject to the War Department, setting forth my views somewhat in detail, and offering my services to perform the work; but there was then no appropriation which could be applied to that object, and the Secretary of War for this reason declined ordering it.
CHRISTINE; A TROUBADOUR'S SONG,
and other Poems. By George H. Miles. New York: Lawrence Kehoe. 1866.