Part 3 (2/2)

All across the great barren Marble Canyon Platform which stretches north of the river from the monoclinal eastern flank of the Kaibab to the angle of the Vermilion Cliffs, abrupt gorges come in, cut by runoff waters from the higher country. Badger Creek and Soap Creek and other lesser watercourses come in by canyons as deep as the river's own, and every junction is piled with the boulders of flash floods. Every junction is a rapid; the prevailing strike of the beds is upstream, a condition which is a maker of rapids as surely as hard rock and lateral gorges are. And the Colorado now is a great stream, but squeezed into a narrow frothing channel that reflects every summer shower by sharp rises. Between high and low water in parts of the canyon there is a vertical difference of a hundred feet. At low water the rocks are deadly, at high water the waves toss a boat like a chip. And they are waves of a peculiar ferocity, for they are not ocean waves, where the water remains in place and only the form pa.s.ses on. Here the form remains and the water pa.s.ses on, and it goes like fire engines, with a roar that trembles the rocks, and in flood the water itself is heavy with red silt.

THE CANYON COUNTRY.

The Artists' View[image]Colorado River of the West, lves. lves.The popular notion of a canyon. Baron F. W. von Egloffstein, artist and topographer with the Ives Expedition of 1857, found in Black Canyon, just above the present Hoover Dam, a subject to fit his own and the public's preconceptions. The fact that he saw this canyon from the river partly justifies the exaggeration of height and narrowness, but as the following picture indicates, he would have exaggerated them anyway: he saw the canyons that way.[image]Colorado River of the West, Ives.The stunned imagination. Egloffstein's ”Big Canyon,” first picture of the Grand Canyon ever made, is essentially a picture of the artist's dismay. Nothing here is realistic: stratification is ignored, forms are falsely seen, narrowness and depth are wildly exaggerated, the rocks might as well be of the texture of clouds.[image]Systematic Geology, King, Vol. I.The romantic imagination. In Gilbert Munger's chromolith, ”Canyon of Lodore,” made for the King Survey and based probably on an O'Sullivan photograph of the early 1870's, the details of cliff profiles and stratification are realistic, but the improbable Indian camp is pure Currier and Ives.[image]The footsteps of history in a land of fable. Across these shallows marked by an angling line of stones, under the fantastic k.n.o.bs and baldheads of the Navajo sandstone at the lower end of Glen Canyon, Escalante and Maera crossed the Colorado in the first year of the Revolution and added this remote corner of New Spain to the map of the world. El Vado de Los Padres, the Crossing of the Fathers, was ever after a major landmark. One of the two feasible crossings between the Roan Cliffs and the mouth of Grand Wash, it was a war route for Ute and Navajo, and later for Mormons chasing raiders or penetrating the southern Indian country on missions to Hopi and Zuni. Superseded as a crossing by Lee's Ferry and later by the Navajo Bridge, both a few miles below, it keeps its poetry. Tower b.u.t.te and other formations still distort the surrealist horizon, the silence and the sun are the same, the steps that Escalante's men cut in the smooth rounding sandstone walls at the mouth of Padre Creek could still lead men or mules down to the water's edge.[image]U.S. Geographical Surveys West of the One Hundredth Meridian, Wheeler, Vol. I. Vol. I.This sketch of the Crossing was made by John E. Weyss on the Wheeler Survey expedition of 1872. Major Powell in 1869 had no artist or photographer, and in 1871 his photographer, Beaman, ran out of plates before they pa.s.sed through here. In 1872, returning with the party that discovered the Escalante River, James Fennemore of the Powell Survey made wet-plate negatives of this stretch of river. In that same summer Wheeler's photographer Bell took some dry-plate pictures that did not turn out well. Weyss was thus one of the first to picture the Crossing, but his drawing was not published until 1889, years after the Powell Survey photographs had appeared in print and were in hundreds of parlors as stereopticon views. Though without any particular status as an artist, Weyss reproduced with reasonable fidelity the character of the river, the walls, and the fantastic erosional forms, and managed to put into his picture some of the moonlike loneliness of the spot. The stones marking the ford are like the veritable footprints of the first white men to cross here.[image]An able painter meets a great and difficult subject. ”The Transept,” by Thomas Moran, based on an 1880 sketch by W. H. Holmes checked against Moran's own sketches of 1873, is one of the earliest and remains one of the best of the Grand Canyon paintings. It is painted from careful[image]Atlas to Accompany the Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District, Dutton. Dutton.observation, but it is realistic only in details where it chooses to be. Elsewhere it is hazed by some of the canyon's distance and mystery and s.p.a.ce. The rattlesnake is ecologically improbable on the rims.[image]Art without metaphor. Thomas Moran, following Ruskin's rule and Turner's practice, blurred and distorted at will so long as he was sure he had the bony structure of a landscape right. William Henry Holmes, the third man to paint the Grand Canyon country, blurred nothing. He did not even permit the atmosphere to blur details for him; his eye was a haze filter. His pictures, which are of more-than-photographic accuracy, which at times approach the diagram, have been justly famous for seventy years as scientific ill.u.s.tration. Yet they have their own devices, their own artistic cunning. Holmes would not transpose or falsify details of his landscape to compose a picture, but he would move himself around indefinitely until the landscape composed itself. He would not falsify proportions, but he would heighten contrasts: the depth, the distance, the persuasive reality of his panoramas is partly the product of this heightening.[image][image]Atlas to Accompany the Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District, Dutton.In the panorama above and below, Holmes has ”composed” by taking a position on the eastern brink of the Kaibab Plateau. In the foreground the East Kaibab Monocline (whose ill.u.s.tration is the apparent reason for the picture) rolls the strata down 2400 feet to the Marble Canyon Platform; the sunken ditch is Marble Canyon. The Vermilion Cliffs jut into the upper left corner, and their extension, the Echo Cliffs, reach down int the Painted Desert across the background. The gate from which the river emerges is the end of Glen Canyon, where Powell crossed to the Hopi with Jacob Hamblin in 1870 and where John D. Lee later established his ferry. The thin lines of gulch barely visible in the left middle ground are Badger and Soap Creeks, whose mouths make two of the nastiest rapids in Marble Canyon. The modern Highway 189 linking the north and south rims of the Grand Canyon comes along the Echo Cliffs and crosses the river at the Navajo Bridge just below Lee's Ferry.[image][image]”A great innovation in natural scenery.” From the top of Mt. Trumbull, on the Uinkaret, Holmes confronted the kind of panorama that demanded a new vocabulary, a new palette, a new eye. In the upper band the view is to the east across 85 miles of wonder. In the background the Grand Canyon cuts through the Kaibab in a maze of rims and b.u.t.tes. The upper Toroweap Valley is in the foreground. Kanab Canyon comes in from the left, Cataract (Havasu) Canyon from the right. The scale is enormous and deceptive: any of the distant sunken b.u.t.tes is greater in ma.s.s than any mountain east of the Rockies.[image][image]Atlas to Accompany the Tertiary History of the Grand Canon District, Dutton.In the lower band the view is southward. The inner gorge of the Grand Canyon is in dead center, with the cinder cone called Vulcan's Throne on its brink. The Toroweap Valley enters from the left. The black basalt flows at right and center come from some of the hundreds of cones and vents that dot the ”Place of Pines.” And across the distance stretch the repet.i.tive architectural profiles of the cliffs, frieze and pediment, plinth and bal.u.s.trade, gorgeously colored and strangely carved, whose understanding and appreciation Dutton said were a special culture. He was right: Look again at the drawings of Baron von Egloffstein.[image][image]Exploration of the Colorado River of the West, Powell.Art and record. The photograph above is by E. O. Beaman, one of the last he made before he ran out of plates in Glen Canyon in 1871. It is marred by too much nondescript low-water beach in the foreground, and the blurriness of the negative makes what is actually a promontory look like a monument. In his drawing, Moran has simply dramatized: narrowed the view, heightened the rock and made it an island, reduced the dull foreground and livened it with figures and boats, and enhanced the background with clouds and moon. Literalists have objected that he falsified; it is quite as true that he made poetic what was prosaic, badly executed, and badly composed.

They went with care, lining Badger Creek, portaging Soap Creek. Soaked to the hide all day, pounded by a pitiless sun, sick of the rancid bacon and the mouldy flour cakes and the inescapable dried apples, they camped and died a little exhausted death on the bank and in the morning went on past more rapids. Three times, because Powell remained cautious, they had to portage everything: it was only on the portages that they blessed the emptiness of the boats. At one portage they had to use again the dangerous three-ply lining technique, stringing all three boats out into the rapid and taking them in from the bottom, after which they could carry around the rest of the fall. The boats were badly battered. On August 7 Bradley had to put four new ribs into his, and recalk the whole hull. That was the day Powell and his brother climbed out to the rim, a half mile above the river, and set up instruments for the expected eclipse. Here too the scientific results were doomed to be disappointing. As they sat waiting, clouds matted over the whole sky, and it began to rain. To cap their day they got lost coming down the cliff and had to crouch soaking on a ledge all through a miserable night until daylight showed them a path down.

No observations on the eclipse, hence no longitude, a thing Powell was desperately anxious to determine. And no Sunday rest next day. Probably not even Bradley, considering the state of their rations, would have suggested it. On a muddy and rising river they ran, or rather portaged, a laborious three and a half miles and camped under the dome of an immense water-worn cave in a bend, a little dubious about their shelter because of the rising water, for high water obviously swept this cave like a broom. They could barely rustle enough firewood to cook supper.

Now they ran through a canyon of polished marble of many colors that even in their ragged and hungry state excited their imaginations. Bradley c.o.c.ked an eye at the notion of collecting specimens and reluctantly gave it up as impractical. The Major found a marble pavement, polished like gla.s.s, that ran for more than a mile; the sun glinted on polished parts of the cliffs. Then a rainstorm showed them the polis.h.i.+ng agent: within minutes of the first drops, muddy rills from the sandstone rims poured over the limestone walls, scouring them from rim to talus. At a bend where the river turned sharply to the east a wall glittered as if set with gems, and on coming nearer they found springs bursting from the cliffs high up and sheeting the rock in rainbows. Below was a garden of incredible green, moss and maidenhair and redbud and hackberry and ferns. They named it Vasey's Paradise, after their last year's botanist from Bloomington.

As they went on the walls grew higher, and still higher, and great b.u.t.tresses thrust out into the channel to block the river into coves and twist it in whirlpools. But here the channel was wider, the river less swift, so that they could take a more leisurely look at the marble chambers and alcoves and caves. Through the gates of flaring canyons that came in from the right, draining the lofty table of the Kaibab westward, they saw the piney back of that n.o.ble plateau. Finally they reached another landmark, one that Lieutenant Ives had tried for but failed to reach in 1858 13 13 - the mouth of the River of Flax, the Colorado Chiquito of the Spaniards. - the mouth of the River of Flax, the Colorado Chiquito of the Spaniards.

By this time Major Powell had determined that what he had called Ute Creek at the foot of the Vermilion Cliffs had been the Paria, had straightened out the rest of his geography, and knew the Little Colorado for what it was.14 It was nothing much to excite any of them. Though at certain seasons of low water on the Little Colorado and high water on the main river the Little Colorado lies in clear sky-blue pools as lovely as the lime-impregnated waters of Havasu Creek in the little paradise near the foot of the Grand Canyon, the Powell party found it, in Bradley's words, ”a loathesome little stream, so filthy and muddy it fairly stinks,” It was nothing much to excite any of them. Though at certain seasons of low water on the Little Colorado and high water on the main river the Little Colorado lies in clear sky-blue pools as lovely as the lime-impregnated waters of Havasu Creek in the little paradise near the foot of the Grand Canyon, the Powell party found it, in Bradley's words, ”a loathesome little stream, so filthy and muddy it fairly stinks,” 15 15 and Sumner wrote it up for ”as disgusting a stream as there is on the continent.” and Sumner wrote it up for ”as disgusting a stream as there is on the continent.” 16 16 Their spirits were not cheered when they heard that they would have to stay here at least two days for the infuriating observations and the absolutely-necessary repairing of the boats. Their spirits were not cheered when they heard that they would have to stay here at least two days for the infuriating observations and the absolutely-necessary repairing of the boats.

Above them, where they camped below the cataclysmic Y of the canyons, the walls went up three thousand feet - the highest they had yet measured. From the rim Powell saw that to the westward they were even higher. Their campsite afforded no decent water, no game. It was ”filthv with dust and alive with insects,” and they killed three rattlesnakes the first afternoon. Anyone camping on the river learns to shake the scorpions out of his bedding and shoes before dressing in the morning, but Bradley (and others, he observed, were in the same fix) did not even have a pair of boots to catch scorpions in. For lack of footwear that would let him climb the cliffs, he went around camp barefoot, saving his one remaining pair of camp moca.s.sins to put on when the sand got too hot or the rocks too sharp.

”Thank G.o.d the trip is nearly over,” he wrote, making full records sitting at a stone table in the Little Colorado camp. ”It is no place for a man in my circ.u.mstances but it will let me out of the Army, and for that I would almost agree to explore the River Styx.” But the others had no such reward to sustain them. ”The men are uneasy and discontented and eager to move on. If the Major does not do something soon I fear the consequences, but he is contented and seems to think that biscuit made of sour and musty flour and a few dried apples is ample to sustain a laboring man. If he can only study geology he will be happy without food or shelter but the rest of us are not afflicted with it to an alarming extent.” 17 17 Neither commander nor men appeared to understand the precise feelings of the other. The Major, as usual, confided only skeleton data to his field notes, but wrote up in his later Report Report his feelings at that stage. If he actually felt what he wrote, and there is little reason to doubt that he did, they were not quite the carefree geologizing preoccupations that Bradley supposed. Below the Colorado Chiquito lay the chasm, Ives' ”Big Canyon,” his feelings at that stage. If he actually felt what he wrote, and there is little reason to doubt that he did, they were not quite the carefree geologizing preoccupations that Bradley supposed. Below the Colorado Chiquito lay the chasm, Ives' ”Big Canyon,” 18 18 that had been a report on men's tongues for a good deal more than two hundred years without ever becoming known. Much more than the frowning gate of Lodore it seemed to him ominous, and for cause: that had been a report on men's tongues for a good deal more than two hundred years without ever becoming known. Much more than the frowning gate of Lodore it seemed to him ominous, and for cause: We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, are chafing each other, as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations remaining. The flour has been resifted through the mosquito-net sieve; the spoiled bacon has been dried, and the worst of it boiled; the few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal bulk; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river; but we have a large sack of coffee. The lighting of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry when we make a portage.We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance, as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs, that rise to the world above; they are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands, or lost among the boulders.We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.19 Either he was unconscious of the growing sullenness among the men, or for literary effect, writing at a later time, he suppressed that detail. Perhaps that famous pa.s.sage with which he shoved off into the Grand Canyon reflects a little of both reasons.

An unknown distance, an unknown river. Actually 217 miles, the full length of the Grand Canyon from the Little Colorado to the Grand Wash Cliffs. And then easy water, according to both Jacob Hamblin 20 20 and Lieutenant Ives, to the mouth of the Virgin and the known world. This was what they faced, this last and most formidable leg of the exploration, as Sam Adams' crack-brained competing expedition collapsed, far back in Cedar Canyon on the Grand. and Lieutenant Ives, to the mouth of the Virgin and the known world. This was what they faced, this last and most formidable leg of the exploration, as Sam Adams' crack-brained competing expedition collapsed, far back in Cedar Canyon on the Grand.

12. The Colorado: The River of Flax to the Virgin

THERE IS a rough physical law to the effect that the carrying power of water increases as the sixth power of its velocity, which is to say that a stream moving two miles an hour will carry particles sixty-four times as large as the same stream moving one mile an hour, and that one moving ten miles an hour will carry particles a million times as great.1 A stream that in low water will deposit even its fine silt and sand, in high water will roll enormous boulders along its bed, and sometimes one can stand near the bank and see a rock that looks as big as a small house yield and sway with the force of the current. A stream that in low water will deposit even its fine silt and sand, in high water will roll enormous boulders along its bed, and sometimes one can stand near the bank and see a rock that looks as big as a small house yield and sway with the force of the current.

Where the Colorado River entered the granite a few miles below the Little Colorado the channel was narrow, the river engorged, very deep, and very swift. It took hold of a boat irresistibly: the characteristic reaction of our diarists was awe. More times than once Bradley was led to report rapids as the worst of the trip so far, and all of them felt the gloom of that black inner gorge and the poverty of the narrow sky.2 To add to undernourishment and exhaustion and strain they had nights of rain that caught them miserable and unprotected on bouldery sh.o.r.es, days of alternating sun and rain that first drenched them and then boiled them in temperatures of 115. Rarely was there a decent camping place; they stopped where daylight or endurance ran out on them. With very little sh.o.r.e, the river did not even provide adequate firewood. Curling up on the edges of cliffs, among boulders, on wet spits of sand, they made out as they could. And along with their discomforts there was an increasing but unspoken fear. To add to undernourishment and exhaustion and strain they had nights of rain that caught them miserable and unprotected on bouldery sh.o.r.es, days of alternating sun and rain that first drenched them and then boiled them in temperatures of 115. Rarely was there a decent camping place; they stopped where daylight or endurance ran out on them. With very little sh.o.r.e, the river did not even provide adequate firewood. Curling up on the edges of cliffs, among boulders, on wet spits of sand, they made out as they could. And along with their discomforts there was an increasing but unspoken fear.

Partly the lack of sh.o.r.es did it, the way the river sometimes took up all the s.p.a.ce and left them no place for lining, no trail for a portage. Rapids that they feared to run they ran because they could do nothing else, and as they came plunging through the waves, tossed from one side to the other by the cus.h.i.+on of the water piling against great rocks, they often had no chance to inspect the river ahead, to search out channels, to guard against falls. They went with the recklessness of Sam Adams, not for lack of better sense but in sheer helplessness.

The pretense that it was a scientific expedition had worn thin. Every barometer they had was out of commission, so that they had lost track of their alt.i.tude and had no way of telling how much fall there was before the Virgin. Even an accurate view of where they had been was denied them, after Howland lost in a swamping his map of the river from the Little Colorado down, and all his notes with it. Anxiety closed around them like the dark rock, and looking up lateral gorges to the outer walls so high and far above, to the b.u.t.tes and towers and enormous pediments and alcoves of the cliff-edged plateaus that now rose above them more than a vertical mile, they could add claustrophobia to their burdens, and the haunting speculation of what it would mean if they had to try to climb out.

Unrelieved labor, incessant strain and anxiety, continuing rain, a river that seemed every day to grow worse, and for food the same moldy bread, spoiled bacon, stewed apples, and for commander a man who they felt would risk all their lives for an extra hour of geologizing, an extra night of squinting at a star.

When they ran into the granite on the second day below the Little Colorado - one of the days that Bradley recorded as the wildest thus far - the Emma Dean Emma Dean was smashed under by a wave and ran swamped for half a mile before its crew got it into an eddy. Bradley and Walter Powell brought their boat through with the loss of an oar, the third escaped with a shaking up and a ducking. That night as they slept among boulders and on ledges so narrow that only Sumner and Major Powell found s.p.a.ce wide enough to make a double bed, Bradley huddled off by himself and wrote up his secret diary in the rain. They had better lie quiet, he said, or one of them would be in the river before morning. was smashed under by a wave and ran swamped for half a mile before its crew got it into an eddy. Bradley and Walter Powell brought their boat through with the loss of an oar, the third escaped with a shaking up and a ducking. That night as they slept among boulders and on ledges so narrow that only Sumner and Major Powell found s.p.a.ce wide enough to make a double bed, Bradley huddled off by himself and wrote up his secret diary in the rain. They had better lie quiet, he said, or one of them would be in the river before morning.

Some of them were in the river every day now. Hawkins capsized and lost his oars the next morning, and after only two and a half days in the Grand Canyon their supplies were again wet and spoiling. At the mouth of a beautiful clear creek coining in from the north they camped to saw out more oars and dry the food. That was Silver Creek, which Powell later, on a lecture tour, rechristened Bright Angel Creek to make a singularly happy contrast with the Dirty Devil above. The cut.w.a.ter of the Emma Dean Emma Dean was broken and all of them were exhausted. Even Bradley was willing to lay over a day for a rest. Immediately Powell, seizing the opportunity, took off up the canyon to geologize. was broken and all of them were exhausted. Even Bradley was willing to lay over a day for a rest. Immediately Powell, seizing the opportunity, took off up the canyon to geologize.

As if to emphasize the need for haste, the Bright Angel layover was hard on the rations. There they finally threw away what remained of the bacon, so many times spoiled and dried and boiled and redried that they gagged at it. And Billy Hawkins, making biscuits on a rock, had the misfortune to let the saleratus get sawed off into the river by the line of one of the boats. From that time on they ate unleavened bread.

Below Bright Angel they got through one laborious day without accident. On the afternoon of the next a furious thunder shower drove them to what shelter they could find among the rocks, where they sat dripping and heard the thunder bounce from cliff to cliff and saw hundreds of flash-flood rivulets burst over the walls above them. The more their need for haste, the less haste they seemed able to make. ”Hard work and little distance seems to be the characteristic of this canyon,” Bradley wrote. Then on the 19th the Emma Dean Emma Dean swamped again, and Bradley's boat, sweeping to the rescue, struck on her cut.w.a.ter with a jolt that started her nails. Two more oars went in that rapid, and all the boats now were so battered that they had to be calked every day. For the sixth day out of the last seven they lay down in soaking blankets. But that night when it cleared off, a great drying fire restored them. So bedraggled were they that they did not start until noon the next day. They were all looking ahead, watching for that break in the walls that might be the Grand Wash Cliffs. swamped again, and Bradley's boat, sweeping to the rescue, struck on her cut.w.a.ter with a jolt that started her nails. Two more oars went in that rapid, and all the boats now were so battered that they had to be calked every day. For the sixth day out of the last seven they lay down in soaking blankets. But that night when it cleared off, a great drying fire restored them. So bedraggled were they that they did not start until noon the next day. They were all looking ahead, watching for that break in the walls that might be the Grand Wash Cliffs.

It seemed as if they might have reached it, or neared it, for the walls did fall back a little and the rapids were further apart. In a half day's run, including a portage and two linings, they ran ten miles. The next day was again for Bradley ”first for das.h.i.+ng wildness of any day we have seen or will will see.” Swept broadside down upon a rapid, Powell's boat rebounded from the cliff and was carried into a narrow slot with no sh.o.r.es to land on. Ahead a bend cut off the view. From around it came the ”mad roar” that had taught them caution many times already. Here they could not be cautious if they would. Powell stood up, hanging to a strap that ran from gunwale to gunwale, trying to spot a channel through the long, winding chute of white water. Their luck held. All they got out of that one was a tremendously exhilarating ride for ten precious miles before the roar of another heavy fall below made them pull ash.o.r.e to reconnoiter. By the time they had portaged that, they were out of the granite. see.” Swept broadside down upon a rapid, Powell's boat rebounded from the cliff and was carried into a narrow slot with no sh.o.r.es to land on. Ahead a bend cut off the view. From around it came the ”mad roar” that had taught them caution many times already. Here they could not be cautious if they would. Powell stood up, hanging to a strap that ran from gunwale to gunwale, trying to spot a channel through the long, winding chute of white water. Their luck held. All they got out of that one was a tremendously exhilarating ride for ten precious miles before the roar of another heavy fall below made them pull ash.o.r.e to reconnoiter. By the time they had portaged that, they were out of the granite.

Their cheers had in them something of the hysteria of strain, and they did not stay cheerful long. Barely had they adjusted themselves to milder water when the river turned sharply from its north-by-west course and bored back almost straight east into the granite again. Overhead the clouds gathered blackly, and it rained.

Their hypnotized spirits now rose and fell with the river, and changed with its course. When, away back at the Little Colorado, they had discovered their lat.i.tude to be as low as that of Callville, they had been cheered, but the river taught them to wait and see, for it persisted in running back toward the north with them: Now it rubbed in the lesson of skepticism by taking them back into the hard rock they feared. ”If it keeps on this way,” Bradley wrote, ”we shall be back where we started from, which would make us feel very much as I imagine the old hog felt when he moved the hollow log so that both ends came on the outside of the fence.” 3 3 Still, there was nothing they could do except to keep rooting at the log. They fought their way down to spend another night on the rocks, with a bad rapid facing them as soon as they should wake up, and its roar an uneasy sound in their dreams. But next day the unpredictable river switched again. After two hard miles the hated granite sank under toward its home at the earth's core. The rapids, though tremendous, seemed by Grand Canyon standards lighter.4 On the afternoon when they ran out of the granite they made ten miles. On the afternoon when they ran out of the granite they made ten miles.

The following day they made twenty-two with great cheerful-ness, and their cheer was doubled by the great marble cave in which the Major chose to camp - dry and s.p.a.cious and out of the interminable rain. Around their fire they sat speculating on how far Grand Wash might be, for the Mormons whose notes on the river from Grand Wash to Callville were in the Major's pocket put the Wash no more than seventy or eighty miles below the mouth of the Little Colorado. On the dogleg river they had already gone more than one hundred twenty. They must be very close, perhaps within a day's running. Ahead, they convinced themselves, the river seemed to widen and the current to slack off. They examined their flour - one sack plus enough for a meal or two - and gauged the skimpy supply against the possible miles ahead. They were half naked, bearded, skinny, and their dreams were haunted by visions of gargantuan meals, but they knew they would make it now.

The river relented. On August 25 they made thirty-five marvelous miles, in spite of a hard portage around what they called Lava Falls, where a basalt flow had first dammed the canyon and then been cut clean through, and in spite of a near accident when the iron strap in the bow of one boat pulled loose and almost let the boat get away in a rapid. All the boats, clearly, were about as used up as the men. They drove themselves.

The opening of their last sack of flour was a solemn moment, and a warning. Down a violent stretch of river where lava made continuous but not major rapids they ran the battered boats recklessly, lining only once in thirty-five miles when they landed on the wrong side of a rapid and couldn't get across to run it safely. Another good omen: the dry abandoned dwellings and granaries of ancient Indians that they had been seeing among the cliffs ever since Glen Canyon gave way to signs of life. In an Indian garden they found squash big enough to eat, and stole a dozen to make green squash sauce, their first fresh vegetable food since the disastrous potato-top greens in Uinta Valley fifty days before. Though the nearly vertical walls of the inner gorge grew higher and higher, their two-day run of seventy miles put them close to two hundred miles below the Little Colorado. ”A few days like this,” Powell said, ”and we are out of prison.”

It was a prison even to him now, not a happy hunting ground of science. And the river knew better than they did. On the morning of August 27 it swung south, and since the dip of the

<script>