The Romance of the Colorado River : $b The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great CanyonsDellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
History
The Romance of the Colorado River : $b The Story of its Discovery in 1840, with an Account of the Later Explorations, and with Special Reference to the Voyages of Powell through the Line of the Great Canyons
Dellenbaugh, Frederick Samuel
Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico) -- Description and travel; Colorado River (Colo.-Mexico) -- Discovery and exploration; Colorado River Valley (Colo.-Mexico) -- Description and travel; Colorado River Valley (Colo.-Mexico) -- Discovery and exploration; Grand Canyon (Ariz.) -- Description and travel; Gran
Cardenas with twelve men had meanwhile gone from Cibola to a place
called Tusayan, or Tucano, situated some twenty or twenty-five leagues
north-westerly from Cibola, from whence he was to strike out toward the
great river these natives had described to Don Pedro de Tobar, who
recently had paid them a visit, and incidentally shot a few of them to
invite submission. Cardenas was kindly received by the people of
Tusayan, who readily supplied him with guides. Having lived in the
country for centuries, they of course knew it and the many trails very
well. They knew the highway down the Gila to the Colorado, and they
told Cardenas about the tall natives living in the lower part of it,
the same whom Alarçon and Diaz had met. In the direction in which
Cardenas was to go they said it was twenty days’ journey through an
unpopulated country, when people would again be met with. After the
party had travelled for twenty days they arrived at a great canyon of
the Colorado River, apparently not having met with the people
mentioned. If Cardenas started from the Moki towns, as has generally
been believed, where would he have arrived by a journey of twenty days,
when an able-bodied man can easily walk to the brink of Marble Canyon
from there in three or four days? Why did the guides, if they belonged
in the Moki towns, conduct Cardenas so far to show him a river which
was so near? The solution seems to be that he started from some
locality other than the present Moki towns. That is to say, there has
been an error, and these Moki towns are not Tusayan. Where Cardenas
reached the great canyon the river came from the _north-east_ and
turned to the _south-south-west_. There are but two places where the
canyoned river in Arizona conforms to this course, one at Lee’s Ferry,
and the other the stretch from Diamond Creek to the Kanab Canyon. The
walls being low at Lee’s Ferry, that locality may be excluded, for
where Cardenas first looked into the canyon it was so deep that the
river appeared like a brook, though the natives declared it to be half
a league wide. Three of the most agile men, after the party had
followed along the rim for three days hunting for a favourable place,
tried to descend to the water, but were unable to go more than
one-third of the way. Yet from the place they reached, the stream
looked very large, and buttes that from above seemed no higher than a
man were found to be taller than the great tower of Seville. There can
be no doubt that this was the gorge we now call the Grand Canyon. No
other answers the description. Cardenas said the width at the top, that
is, the “outer” gorge with its broken edge, was three or four leagues
or more in an air line.[6] This is the case at both great bends of the
river. The point he reached has usually been put, without definite
reason, at about opposite Bright Angel River, say near the letter “L”
of the word “Colorado” on the relief map, page 41 _op_., but here the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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