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
The “inner gorge” of the Grand Canyon appears to have been cut far more
rapidly than the outer one, and at a much later period; were this not
the case there would be no inner gorge. It is a singular fact that some
side canyons, the Kanab, for example, while now possessing no running
water, or at best a puny rivulet, and depending for their corrasion on
intermittent floods, meet on equal terms the great Colorado, the giant
that never for a second ceases its ferocious attack. Admitting that the
sharper declivity of the Kanab would enhance its power of corrasion,
nevertheless we should expect to see it approach the Grand Canyon by
leaps and bounds, like the Havasupai farther down, but, on the
contrary, there are parts that appear to be at a standstill in
corrasion, or even filling up, and its floor is a regular descent,
except for the last three or four miles where the canyon is clogged by
huge rocks that seem to have fallen from above. The maximum height of
its present flood-waters is about six feet, proved by a fern-covered
calcareous deposit, projecting some fifteen feet, caused by a spring
(Shower-Bath Spring) on the side of the wall, seven or eight miles
above the mouth, which is never permitted by the floods to build nearer
the floor of the canyon. A suspicion arises, on contemplating some of
these apparent discrepancies, that the prevailing conditions of
corrasion are not what they were at some earlier period, when they were
such that it was rendered more rapid and violent; that there was
perhaps an epoch when these deep-cut tributary canyons carried
perennial streams, and when the volume of the Colorado itself was many
times greater, possessing a multiplied corrasive power, while the
adjacent areas were about as arid as now. At such a time, perhaps, the
Colorado performed the main work of the inner gorge, the Kanab, and
similar affluents, their deep now rather evenly graded canyons. Such an
increase of volume, if we suppose the aridity to remain as now, could
have come about only by an increase of precipitation on the mountain
summits. During the Glacial Epoch, the Rocky Mountain summits were
considerably glaciated, the amount varying according to altitude and
latitude. The general topography of the Colorado River was about as it
is to-day, and the rainfall in the valleys probably nearly the same, or
at least only a little greater. In other words, the conditions were
those of to-day intensified. In summer, then, the amount of water
seeking outlet by these drainage channels to the sea was enormously
multiplied, and the corrasive power was correspondingly augmented. When
the ice caps finally began to permanently diminish, the summer floods
were doubtless terrific. The waters of the Colorado now rise in the
Grand Canyon, on the melting of the snows in the distant mountains,
from forty to one hundred feet; the rise must then have amounted to
from one hundred to four hundred or more. The Kanab heads in two very
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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