Part 12 (1/2)
Over this vast gulf b.u.t.terflies with daintily colored wings float in lovely laziness.
In a number of the canons, ruined cliff houses are numerous, and a few of these are found far north in Glen Canon. The walls, in places, are marked with picture writing. This probably was the work of the cliff dwellers or of the Indians.
Much of the canon region may well be called the ”No Man's Land” of the continent. In it are a numerous and a.s.sorted lot of men with unknown histories. Mingling with these are Indians, miners, health-seekers, and strange and interesting characters, among whom are aged trappers and prospectors and real cowboys who have survived the days of adventures.
Water is the great sculptor of the face of nature. The gentle raindrop grapples with mountains of solid rock, and with never-ending persistence drags them piecemeal into the sea. Here the material is redeposited in sedimentary strata, and this may emerge into the light in the ages yet to be.
A narrow ditch in the earth will widen by the caving-in of its sides.
If the ditch be deepened, the caved-in matter being removed, it will continue to widen. And so it is with this canon; the weathering or the caving-in of these walls goes ever on. The sharpness of the walls, and many of their striking features, are due to the peculiar climatic conditions that exist in this region--the short rainy seasons and long dry periods. Had there been a more even and abundant precipitation, it is probable that more vegetation would have been produced, which would have had a marked influence upon the walls, giving them a more rounded and less interesting form.
The canon broadens with the years. Cut narrow by the river, it has gradually widened by the caving-in of the walls. If it had remained as the river cut it, it would now be as narrow at the top as it is in the bottom--a canon about a mile deep, only a few hundred feet wide, and with perpendicular walls. As it is, the walls rise through a series of shattered inclines, precipitous slopes and terraces, with here and there a vertical section.
Well may the Canon of the Colorado be called the greatest inanimate wonder in the world. Written in the exposed and remaining rock-strata through which the river has cut its way is a wonderful story of the past, a marvelous and splendid romance. At an enormously remote time the Grand Canon plateau rose from the primeval sea. After long exposure and great weathering it sank back, remained submerged for ages, and thousands of feet of strata were deposited upon it. Again it emerged, was exposed ”a million years and a day,” during which aeon thousands of feet of strata were eroded away. Again it went down into the sea, and upon it were piled thousands of feet of additional strata. A fourth time it rose slowly above the water. As this plateau was rising, its surface was acted upon by the elements. The part of the plateau surrounding the Grand Canon proper was the scene of repeated volcanic action and earthquake disturbance. Here the strata have been subjected to repeated faultings, heavings, tiltings, and lava-flows. This uplift imprisoned an enormous Eocene lake that occupied much of what is now the Colorado River basin. This lake the river drained. The drainage was quite probably caused by the fact that the eastern part of the territory was uplifted higher than the western. The drainage-system of the Colorado River, as we now know it, began at that time to take on form and its waters started to cut the canon. This crude outline covers cycling ages, and probably represents millions of years.
Through several thousand years the plateau slowly rose, and all this time the river was gradually cutting its way down into it. Finally the plateau ceased to rise and long remained at a standstill. After cutting down to its first base level, the river had so little fall that its waters, overladen with debris, ceased deepening the channel.
The widening of the canon went steadily on. Again the plateau slowly rose, perhaps two thousand feet. This uplift increased the fall of the river and again set it to deepening its channel, a work it is still doing.
The waters of the Colorado River are heavily laden with sediment.
During the ages it has transported an inconceivable bulk of eroded material to the ocean. Much of this has come from its three hundred thousand square miles of mountainous drainage basin and all the material which formerly occupied the vast s.p.a.ces of its numerous canons. Continual caving of the walls compels the river to spend most of its time and energy in breaking up this debris and carrying it forward to the sea. This condition has existed for thousands of years.
It should be borne in mind that the transporting capacity of running water varies as the sixth power of its velocity. Therefore when a stream doubles its velocity it is competent to move particles sixty-four times greater than before. If its rate of flow is trebled, its transporting power is increased seven hundred and twenty-nine times. This goes to explain the frightful havoc of streams at times of flood.
The tributary streams of the Colorado come from arid regions and from the deserts, and are subject to sudden violent cloud-bursts and enormous floods. Though these are of short duration, they are of tremendous force. Earthy matter, rocky debris, and ofttimes hundreds of trees are swept along by the waters that rush in from side canons like an awful avalanche. Lodged driftwood over one hundred feet above normal river-level tells of the magnitude of these wild floods.
Where a stream has all the load of any given degree of fineness that it is capable of carrying, the entire energy of the descending water is consumed by the transportation of the water and its burden, so that none is applied to erosion. If it has an excess of load, its velocity is thereby lessened and its power to transport is diminished; consequently a part of its load is dropped. If it has less than a full load, it is in a condition to receive more, which it eagerly does.
Thereby its bed is swept clean, and then only does erosion become possible. Thus it is seen that the work of transportation may at times monopolize the entire energy of a stream to the exclusion of erosion; or the two works may be carried forward at the same time.
The rapidity of erosion depends upon the hardness, size, and number of the fragments in the flowing water, upon the durability of the stream-bed, and upon the velocity of the current, the element of velocity being of double importance, since it determines not only the size but the speed of the particle with which it works. Transportation is favored by an increased water-supply as much as by increased declivity, because when a stream increases in volume the increase in its velocity outruns the increase in volume, and its transporting power is correspondingly augmented. It is due to this that a stream which is subject to floods--periodical or otherwise--has a much greater transporting power than it could possess were its total water-supply evenly distributed throughout the year.
During one period of volcanic activity the focus of lava-flows into the canon was at Lava Falls. A number of lava-streams burst directly into the canon through the walls, while several flows poured their fiery floods over the brink. What a wild and spectacular condition existed while the river, deep in the canon, received these tributaries of liquid fire! When the flow ceased, the canon for sixty miles was filled with lava to the depth of about five hundred feet. The lava cooled, and in time was eroded away. The records of this spectacular story are still easily read.
Through these thousand miles of canon, more than one fifth of which is the Grand Canon, the river has a fall of about five thousand feet, unevenly divided. There are long stretches of quiet water, but in the Lodore, Cataract, Marble, and Grand Canons are numerous and turbulent currents flowing amid ma.s.ses of wild, rocky debris. There are about five hundred bad rapids and many others of lesser power. Most of these rapids are caused by rock-jams--dams formed by ma.s.ses of rocky debris that have fallen from the walls above or have been swept into the main canon by tributary streams. A few rapids are caused by ribs of hard, resistant rock that have not been worn down to the level of the softer rock.
The canon was discovered by Spaniards in 1540. A government expedition visited it in 1859. The report of this expedition, printed in 1861, is accompanied with a picture of an ideal canon. It is shown as narrow, with appallingly high vertical walls. Lieutenant Ives, who was in charge, thus closes his account:--
Ours has been the first and will doubtless be the last party of Whites to visit this profitless location. It seems intended by Nature that the Colorado River, along the greater portion of its lonely and majestic way, shall be forever unvisited and undisturbed.
Ten years later Major John W. Powell explored the series of canons from end to end. Hundreds of expeditions that have attempted to go through them have failed. Of the half-dozen that succeeded, one was organized and conducted by Julius F. Stone, a manufacturer of Columbus, Ohio.
”Why,” I asked Mr. Stone, ”did you take the hazard and endure the acute hards.h.i.+p of this expedition?” His reply was:--
To photograph consecutively the entire canon system of the Green and Colorado Rivers, which, so far as the upper canons are concerned, had not yet been done. We also wished to determine the accuracy of some statements heretofore made which seemed reasonably open to question.
Mr. Stone went all the way through the canon, took hundreds of photographs, and made numerous measurements. He made a thorough study of this canon, added greatly to our knowledge of it, and corrected a number of misconceptions concerning it.
But [continued Mr. Stone] it was also to get away from work! For the fun of the thing! Year after year the voice of many waters had said: ”Come join us in our joyous, boisterous journey to the sea, and you shall know the ecstasy of wrestling with Nature naked-handed and in the open, as befits the measure of a man.” It takes on many forms and numberless variations, this thing called play. Its appealing voices come from far and near, in waking and in dreams; from quiet, peaceful places they allure with the a.s.surance of longed-for rest; from the deeps of unfrequented regions they whisper of eager day- and night-time hours br.i.m.m.i.n.g with the fullness of heart's desire, while bugle-throated, their challenge sounds forever from every unsealed height.
I presume it is quite true that the chance of disaster (provided we consider death as being such) followed us like the eyes of the forest that note every move of the intruder but never reveal themselves. But somehow or other the snarling threat of the rapids did not creep into the little red hut where fear lives, and so burden our task with irresolution or the handicap of indecision; therefore, whatever dangers may have danced invisible attendance on our daily toil, they rarely revealed themselves in the form of accident, and never in the shape of difficulties too great to be overcome, though sometimes the margin was rather small.