Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico Part 10

Once in a great while I would b.u.mp a rock, and would look around sheepishly, to see if my brother had seen me do it. I usually found him with a big grin on his face, if he happened to be ahead of me.

We rowed about twenty miles down the river before we learned what had caused the noises heard in the morning. On rounding a turn we saw the strange spectacle of fifteen or twenty men at work on the half-constructed hull of a flat-bottomed steamboat, over sixty feet in length. This boat was on the bank quite a distance above the water, with the perpendicular walls of a crooked side canyon rising above it.

It was a strange sight, here in this out-of-the-way corner of the world. Some men with heavy sledges were under the boat, driving large spikes into the planking. This was the noise we had heard that morning.

The blasting, we learned later, was at some coal mines, several miles up this little canyon, which bore the name of Warm Creek Canyon. A road led down through the canyon, making it possible to haul the lumber for the boat, clear to the river's edge. The nearest railroad was close to two hundred miles from this place, quite a haul considering the ruggedness of the country. The material for the boat had been s.h.i.+pped from San Francisco, all cut, ready to put together.

The vessel was to be used to carry coal down the river, to a dredge that had recently been installed at Lee's Ferry.

The dinner gong had just sounded when we landed, and we were taken along with the crowd. There were some old acquaintances in this group of men, we found, from Flagstaff, Arizona. These men had received a Flagstaff paper which had published a short note we had sent from Green River, Utah. They had added a comment that no doubt this would be the last message we would have an opportunity to send out. Very cheering for Emery's wife, no doubt. Fortunately she shared our enthusiasm, and if she felt any apprehension her few letters failed to show it.

We resumed our rowing at once after dinner, for we wished to reach Lee's Ferry, twenty-five miles distant, that evening. We had a good current, and soon left our friends behind us. We pulled with a will, and mile after mile was covered in record time, for our heavy boats.

The walls continued to get higher as we neared our goal, going up sheer close to the river. We judged the greatest of these walls to be about eleven hundred feet high. After four hours of steady pulling we began to weary, for ours were no light loads to propel; but we were spurred to renewed effort by hearing the sounds of an engine in the distance. On rounding a turn we saw the end of Glen Canyon ahead of us, marked by a breaking down of the walls, and a chaotic mixture of dikes of rock, and slides of brilliantly coloured shales, broken and tilted in every direction. Just below this, close to a ferry, we saw the dredge on the right side of the river. We were quite close to the dredge before we were seen. Some men paused at their work to watch us as we neared them, one man calling to those behind him, "There come the brothers!"

A whistle blew announcing the end of their day's labour, and of ours as well, as it happened. There was some cheering and waving of hats.

One who seemed to be the foreman asked us to tie up to a float which served as a landing for three motor boats, and a number of skiffs. A loudly beaten triangle of steel announced that the evening meal was ready at a stone building not far from the dredge. We were soon seated at a long table with a lot of others as hungry as we, partaking of a well-cooked and substantial meal. We made arrangements to take a few meals here, as we wished to overhaul our outfits before resuming our journey.

The meal ended, we inquired for the post-office, and were directed to a ranch building across the Paria River, a small stream which entered from the north, not unlike the Fremont River in size and appearance.

Picking our way in the darkness, on boulders and planks which served as a crossing, we soon reached the building, set back from the river in the centre of the ranch. A man named Johnson, with his family, had charge of the ranch and post-office as well. Mail is brought by carrier from the south, a cross-country trip of 160 miles, through the Hopi and Navajo Indian Reservations.

Johnson informed us that an old-time friend named Dave Rust had waited here three or four days, hoping to see us arrive, but business matters had forced him to leave just the day before. We were very sorry to have missed him. Rust lived in the little Mormon town of Kanab, Utah, eighty miles north of the Grand Canyon opposite our home. In addition to being a cattle man and rancher, he had superintended the construction of a cable crossing, or tramway, over the Colorado River, beside the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, not many miles from our home.

He also maintains a cozy camp at this place, for the accommodation of tourists and hunting parties, which he conducts up Bright Angel Creek and into the Kaibab Forest. It was while returning from such a hunting trip that we first met Rust. Many are the trips we have taken with him since then, Emery, with his wife and the baby, even, making the "crossing" and the eighty-mile horseback ride to his home in Kanab, while I had continued on through to Salt Lake City. Rust had been the first to tell us of Galloway and his boating methods; and had given us a practical demonstration on the river. Naturally there was no one we would have been more pleased to see at that place, than Rust.

In our mail we found a letter from him, stating, among other things, that he had camped the night before on the plateau, a few hundred feet above a certain big rapid, well known through this section as the Soap Creek Rapid. This locality is credited with being the scene of the first fatality which overtook the Brown-Stanton expedition; Brown being upset and drowned in the next rapid which followed, after having portaged the Soap Creek Rapid. Rust wrote also that there was a sh.o.r.e along the rapid, so there would be no difficulty in making the portage; and concluded by saying that he had a very impressive dream about us that night, the second of its kind since we had started on our journey.

We understood from this that he had certain misgivings about this rapid, and took his dream to be a sort of a warning. Rust should have known us better. With all the perversity of human nature that letter made me want to run that rapid if it were possible. Why run the rapid, and get a moving picture as it was being done. Then we could show Rust how well we had learned our lesson! So I thought as we returned to the buildings near the dredge, but said nothing of what was in my mind to Emery, making the mental reservation that I would see the rapid first and decide afterwards.

The foreman of the placer mines called us into his office that evening, and suggested that it might be a good plan to go over our boats thoroughly before we left, and offered us the privilege of using their workshop, with all its conveniences, for any needed repairs. He also let us have a room in one of the buildings for our photographic work.

This foreman mourned the loss of a friend who had recently been drowned at the ferry. It seemed that the floods which had preceded us, especially that part which came down the San Juan River, had been something tremendous, rising 45 feet at the ferry, where the river was 400 feet wide; and rising much higher in the narrow portions of Glen Canyon. Great ma.s.ses of driftwood had floated down, looking almost like a continuous raft. When the river had subsided somewhat, an attempt was made to cross with the ferry. The foreman and his friend, with two others, and a team of horses. .h.i.tched to a wagon, were on the ferry. When in midstream it overturned in the swollen current. Three of the men escaped, the other man and the horses were drowned.

A careful search had been made for the body to a point a few miles down the river, then the canyon closed in and they could go no farther. The body was never recovered. It is seldom that the Colorado River gives up its dead. The heavy sands collect in the clothes, and a body sinks much quicker than in ordinary water. Any object lodged on the bottom is soon covered with a sand-bar. The foreman knew this, of course; yet he wished us to keep a lookout for the body, which might, by some chance, have caught on the sh.o.r.e, when the water receded. This was as little as any one would do, and we gave him our promise to keep a careful watch.

CHAPTER XVII

A NIGHT OF THRILLS

We declined the offer of a roof that night, preferring to sleep in the open here, for the evening was quite warm. We went to work the next morning when the whistle sounded at the dredge. Beyond caulking a few leaks in the boats, little was done with them. The tin receptacles holding our photographic plates and films were carefully coated with a covering of melted paraffine; for almost anything might happen, in the one hundred miles of rapid water that separated us from our home.

Lee's Ferry was an interesting place, both for its old and its new a.s.sociations. This had long been the home of John D. Lee, well known for the part he took in the Mountain Meadow Ma.s.sacre, and for which he afterwards paid the death penalty. Here Lee had lived for many years, making few visits to the small settlements to the north, but on one of these visits he was captured. There were six or seven other buildings near the large stone building where we took our meals, so arranged that they made a short street, the upper row being built against a cliff of rock and shale, the other row being placed halfway between this row and the river. These buildings were all of rock, of which there was no lack, plastered with adobe, or mud. One, we were told, had been Lee's stronghold, it was a square building, with a few very small windows, and with loopholes in the sides. At the time of our visit it was occupied by two men; one, a young Englishman, recently arrived from South Africa--a remittance-man, in search of novelty--the other a grizzled forty-niner. Much could be written about this interesting group of men, and their alluring employment. There were some who had followed this work through all the camps of the West--to Colorado, to California, and to distant Alaska as well, they had journeyed; but it is doubtful if, in all their wanderings, they had seen any camp more strangely located than this, hemmed in with canyon walls. To us, their dredge and the steamboat up the river seemed as if they had been taken from the pages of some romance, or bit of fiction, and placed before us for our entertainment.

There were other men as well, just as interesting m their way as the "old-timers," the sons of some of the owners of this proposition,--clean-cut young fellows,--working side by side with the veterans, as enthusiastic as if on their college campus.

One feature about the dredge interested us greatly. This was a tube, or sucker, held suspended by a derrick above a float, and operated by compressed air. The tube was dropped into the sand at the bottom of the river, and would eat its way into it, bringing up rocks the size of one's fist, along with the gravel and sand. In a few hours a hole, ten or fifteen feet in depth and ten feet in diameter, would be excavated. Then the tube was raised, the float was moved, and the work started again. The coa.r.s.e sand and gravel, carried by a stream of water, was returned to the river, after pa.s.sing over the riffles; the screenings which remained pa.s.sed over square metal plates--looking like sheets of tin--covered with quicksilver. These plates were cleaned with a rubber window-cleaner, and the entire residue was saved in a heavy metal pot, ready for the chemist.

One day only was needed for our work, and by evening we were ready for the next plunge. We might have enjoyed a longer stay with these men, but stronger than this desire was our anxiety to reach our home, separated from us by a hundred miles of river, no extended part of the distance being entirely free from rapids. We had written to the Grand Canyon, bidding them look for our signal fire in Bright Angel Creek Canyon, in from seven to ten days, and planned to leave on the following morning. Nothing held us now except the hope that the mail, which was due that evening, might bring us a letter, although that was doubtful, for we were nearly a week ahead of our schedule as laid out at Green River, Utah.

As we had antic.i.p.ated, there was no mail for us, so we turned to inspect the mail carrier. He was a splendid specimen of the Navajo Indian,--a wrestler of note amoung his people, we were told,--large and muscular, and with a peculiar springy, slouchy walk that gave one the impression of great reserve strength. He had ridden that day from Tuba, an agency on their reservation, about seventy miles distant.

This was the first sign of an Indian that we had seen in this section, although we had been travelling along the northern boundary of their reservation since leaving the mouth of the San Juan. These Indians have no use for the river, being children of the desert, rather than of the water. Beyond an occasional crossing and swimming their horses at easy fords, they make no attempt at its navigation, even in the quiet water of Glen Canyon.

Some of the men showed this Indian our boats, and told him of our journey. He smiled, and shrugged his ma.s.sive shoulders as much as to say, he "would believe it when he saw it." He had an opportunity to see us start, at least, on the following morning.

Before leaving, we climbed a 300-foot mound on the left bank of the Paria River, directly opposite the Lee ranch. This mound is known as Lee's Lookout. Whether used by Lee or not, it had certainly served that purpose at some time. A circular wall of rock was built on top the mound, and commanded an excellent view of all the approaches to the junction of the rivers. This spot is of particular interest to the geologist, for a great fault, indicated by the Vermilion Cliffs, marks the division between Glen Canyon and Marble Canyon. This line of cliffs extends to the south for many miles across the Painted Desert, and north into Utah for even a greater distance, varying in height from two hundred feet at the southern end to as many thousand feet in some places to the north. Looking to the west, we could see that here was another of those sloping uplifts of rock, with the river cutting down, increasing the depth of the canyon with every mile.

We had now descended about 2900 feet since leaving Green River City, Wyoming, not a very great fall for the distance travelled if an average is taken, but a considerable portion of the distance was on quiet water, as we have noted, with a fall of a foot or two to the mile, and with alternate sections only containing bad water. We were still at an elevation of 3170 feet above the sea-level, and in the 283 miles of canyon ahead of us--Marble Canyon and the Grand Canyon combined--the river descends 2330 feet, almost a continuous series of rapids from this point to the end of the Grand Canyon.

After a hasty survey from our vantage point, we returned to the river and prepared to embark. As we left the dredge, the work was closed down for a few minutes, and the entire crowd of men, about forty in number, stood on an elevation to watch us run the first rapid. The Indian had crossed to the south side of the to feed his horse and caught a glimpse of us as we went past him. Running pell-mell down to his boat, he crossed the river and joined the group on the bank. About this time we were in the grip of the first rapid, a long splashy one, with no danger whatever, but large enough to keep us busy until we had pa.s.sed from view.

A few miles below this, after running a pair of small rapids, we reached a larger one, known as the Badger Creek Rapid, with a twenty-foot drop in the first 250 feet, succeeded by a hundred yards of violent water. Emery had a little difficulty in this rapid, when his boat touched a rock which turned the boat sideways in the current, and he was nearly overturned in the heavy waves which followed. As it was, we were both drenched.

About the middle of the afternoon, twelve miles below Lee's Ferry, we reached the Soap Creek Rapid of which we had heard so much. The rapid had a fall of twenty-five feet, and was a quarter of a mile long. Most of the fall occurred in the first fifty yards. The river had narrowed down until it was less than two hundred feet wide at the beginning of the descent. Many rocks were smattered all through the upper end, especially at the first drop. On the very brink or edge of the first fall, there was a submerged rock in the centre of the channel, making an eight-foot fall over the rock. A violent current, deflected from the left sh.o.r.e, shot into this centre and added to the confusion.

Twelve-foot waves from the conflicting currents, played leap-frog, jumping over or through each other alternately. Clearly there was no channel on that side. On the right or north side of the stream it looked more feasible, as the water shot down a sloping chute over a hundred feet before meeting with an obstruction. This came in the shape of two rocks, one about thirty feet below the other. To run the rapid this first rock would have to be pa.s.sed before any attempt could be made to pull away from the second rock, which was quite close to the sh.o.r.e. Once past that there was a clear channel to the end of the rapid, if the centre, which contained many rocks, was avoided. Below the rapid was the usual whirlpool, then a smaller rapid, running under the left wall. This second rapid was the one that had been so fatal for Brown. The Soap Creek rapid in many ways was not as bad as some we had gone over in Cataract Canyon, but there were so many complications that we hesitated a long time before coming to a decision that we would make an attempt with one boat, depending on our good luck which had brought us through so many times, as much as we depended on our handling of the boat.

It was planned that I should make the first attempt while Emery remained with the motion-picture camera just below the rock that we most feared, with the agreement that he was to get a picture of the upset if one occurred, then run to the lower end of the rapid with a rope and a life-preserver.

After adjusting life-preservers I returned to my boat and was soon on the smooth water above the rapid, holding my boat to prevent her from being swept over the rock in the centre, jockeying for the proper position before I would allow her to be carried into the current. Once in, it seemed but an instant until I was past the first rock, and almost on top of the second. I was pulling with every ounce of strength, and was almost clear of the rock when the stern touched it gently. I had no idea the boat would overturn, but thought she would swing around the rock, heading bow first into the stream, as had been done before on several occasions. Instead of this she was thrown on her side with the bottom of the boat held against the rock while I found myself thrown out of the boat, but hanging to the gunwale. Then the boat swung around and instantly turned upright while I scrambled back into the c.o.c.kpit. Looking over my shoulder, when I had things well in hand again, I saw my brother was still at the camera, white as a sheet, but turning at the crank as if our entire safety depended on it. After I landed the water-filled boat, however, he confessed to me that he had no idea whether he had caught the upset or not, as he may have resumed the work when he saw that I was safe.

Then we went to work to find out what damage was done. First we found that the case, which was supposed to be waterproof, had a half-inch of water inside, but fortunately none of our films were wet. Some plates which we had just exposed and which were still in the holders were soaked. The cameras also had suffered. We hurriedly wiped off the surplus water and piled these things on the sh.o.r.e, then emptied the boat of a few barrels of water.

This one experience, I suppose, should have been enough for me with that rapid, but I foolishly insisted on making another trial at it with the _Edith_, for I felt sure I could make it if I only had another chance, and the fact that Emery had the empty boat at the end of the rapid and could rescue me if an upset occurred greatly lessened the danger. The idea of making a portage, with the loss of nearly a day, did not appeal to me.

Emery agreed to this reluctantly, and advised waiting until morning, for it was growing dusk, but with the remark "I will sleep better with both boats tied at the lower end of the rapid," I returned to the _Edith_. To make a long story short I missed my channel, and was carried over the rock in the centre of the stream. The _Edith_ had bravely mounted the first wave, and was climbing the second comber, standing almost on end, seemed to me, when the wave crested over the stern while the current shooting it from the side struck the submerged bow and she fell back in the water upside down. It was all done so quickly, I hardly knew what had occurred, but found myself in the water, whirling this way and that, holding to the right oar with a death-grip. I wondered if the strings would hold, and felt a great relief when the oar stopped slipping down,--as the blade reached the ring. It was the work of a second to climb the oar, and I found I was under the c.o.c.kpit. Securing a firm hold on the gunwale, which had helped us so often, I got on the outside of the boat, thinking I might climb on top. About that time one of the largest waves broke over me, knocking me on the side of the head as if with a solid object, nearly tearing me from the boat. After that I kept as close to the boat as possible, paddling with my feet to keep them clear of rocks. Then the suction of the boat caught them and dragged them under, and for the rest of the rapid I had all I could do to hang to the boat. As the rapid dwindled I began to look for Emery, but was unable to see him, for it was now growing quite dark, but I could see a fire on sh.o.r.e that he had built. I tried to call but was strangled with the breaking waves; my voice was drowned in the roar of the rapid. One of the life-preservers was torn loose and floated ahead of me. Finally I got an answer, and could see that Emery had launched his boat. As he drew near I told him to save the life-preserver, which he did, then hurriedly pulled for me. I remarked with a forced laugh, to rea.s.sure him, "Gee, Emery, this water's cold."

He failed to join in my levity, however, and said with feeling, "Thank the good Lord you are here!" and down in my heart I echoed his prayer of thanks.

Somehow I had lost all desire to successfully navigate the Soap Creek Rapid.

But our troubles were not entirely over. Emery had pulled me in after a futile attempt or two, with a hold sometimes used by wrestlers, linking his arm in mine, leaning forward, and pulling me in over his back I was so numbed by the cold that I could do little to help him, after what, I suppose, was about a quarter of an hour's struggle in the water; although it seemed much longer than that to me.

We then caught the _Edith_ and attempted to turn her over, but before this could be done we were dragged into the next rapid. Emery caught up the oars, while I could do nothing but hold to the upturned boat, half filled with water, striving to drag us against the wall on the left side of the stream. It was no small task to handle the two boats in this way, but Emery made it; then, when he thought we were sure of a landing, the _Edith_ dragged us into the river again. Two more small rapids were run as we peered through the darkness for a landing.

Finally we reached the sh.o.r.e over a mile below the Soap Creek Rapid.

We were on the opposite side of the stream from that where we had unloaded the _Defiance_. This material would have to stay where it was that night.

While bailing the water from the _Edith_ we noticed a peculiar odour, and thought for a while that it might be the body of the man who was drowned at the ferry, but later we found it came from a green cottonwood log that had become water-soaked, and was embedded in the sand, close to our landing. It was Emery's turn to do the greater part of the camp work that night, while I was content to hug the fire, wrapped in blankets, waiting for the coffee to boil.

CHAPTER XVIII

MARBLE HALLS AND MARBLE WALLS

There was little of the spectacular in our work the next day as we slowly and laboriously dragged an empty boat upstream against the swift-running current, taking advantage of many little eddies, but finding much of the sh.o.r.e swept clean. I had ample opportunity to ponder on the wisdom of my attempt to save time by running the Soap Creek Rapid instead of making a portage, while we carried our loads over the immense boulders that banked the stream, down to a swift piece of water, past which we could not well bring the boats or while we developed the wet plates from the ruined plate-holders. It was with no little surprise that we found all the plates, except a few which were not uniformly wet and developed unevenly, could be saved. It took a day and a half to complete all this work.