Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico); Grand Canyon (Ariz.); United States -- Discovery and exploration
before noon we come to a long, bad fall, where the channel is filled
with rocks on the left which turn the waters to the right, where they
pass under an overhanging rock. On examination we determine to run it,
keeping as close to the left-hand rocks as safety will permit, in order
to avoid the overhanging cliff. The little boat runs over all right;
another follows, but the men are not able to keep her near enough to the
left bank and she is carried by a swift chute into great waves to the
right, where she is tossed about and Bradley is knocked over the side;
his foot catching under the seat, he is dragged along in the water with
his head down; making great exertion, he seizes the gunwale with his
left hand and can lift his head above water now and then. To us who
are below, it seems impossible to keep the boat from going under the
overhanging cliff; but Powell, for the moment heedless of Bradley's
mishap, pulls with all his power for half a dozen strokes, when the
danger is past; then he seizes Bradley and pulls him in. The men in the
boat above, seeing this, land, and she is let down by lines.
Just here we emerge from the Canyon of Desolation, as we have named it,
into a more open country, which extends for a distance of nearly a mile,
when we enter another canyon cut through gray sandstone.
About three o'clock in the afternoon we meet with a new difficulty. The
river fills the entire channel; the walls are vertical on either side
from the water's edge, and a bad rapid is beset with rocks. We come to
the head of it and land on a rock in the stream. The little boat is let
down to another rock below, the men of the larger boat holding to the
line; the second boat is let down in the same way, and the line of the
third boat is brought with them. Now the third boat pushes out from the
upper rock, and, as we have her line below, we pull in and catch her as
she is sweeping by at the foot of the rock on which we stand. Again the
first boat is let down stream the full length of her line and the second
boat is passed down, by the first to the extent of her line, which is
held by the men in the first boat; so she is two lines' length from
where she started. Then the third boat is let down past the second, and
still down, nearly to the length of her line, so that she is fast to the
second boat and swinging down three lines' lengths, with the other two
boats intervening. Held in this way, the men
FROM THE UINTA TO THE GRAND.
197
are able to pull her into a cove in the left wall, where she is made
fast. But this leaves a man on the rock above, holding to the line of
the little boat. When all is ready, he springs from the rock, clinging
to the line with one hand and swimming with the other, and we pull him
in as he goes by. As the two boats, thus loosened, drift down, the men
powell-canyons-132.jpg
LIGHTHOUSE ROCK, CANYON OF DESOLATION.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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