The Romance of the Colorado River. Frederick Samuel DellenbaughЧитать онлайн книгу.
the author's views on Coronado's route see the Bulletin of the
American Geographical Society, December, 1897. Those views have been
confirmed by later study, the only change being the shifting of Cibola
from the Florida Mountains north-westerly to the region of the Gila. See
map p. 115, Breaking the Wilderness.
*** It may be noted here with reference to the location of Cibola,
Tiguex, Tusayan, etc., that too much heretofore has been ASSUMED. The
explanations presented are often very lame and unsatisfactory when
critically examined. So many writers are now committed to the errors, on
this subject that it will be a hard matter to arrive at the truth.
Coronado proceeded eastward to about the western line of Missouri, and, finding colonisation anywhere in the regions visited out of the question, he returned in 1542 to Mexico, with his entire army excepting a couple of padres.
CHAPTER III
The Grand Canyon—Character of the Colorado River—The Water-Gods; Erosion and Corrosion—The Natives and their Highways—The "Green River Valley" of the Old Trappers—The Strange Vegetation and Some Singular Animals.
The stupendous chasm known as the Grand Canyon, discovered by Cardenas in the autumn of 1540, is the most remarkable feature of this extraordinary river, and at the same time is one of the marvels of the world. Though discovered so long ago that we make friends with the conquistadores when we approach its history, it remained, with the other canyons of the river, a problem for 329 years thereafter, that is, till 1869. Discovery does not mean knowledge, and knowledge does not mean publicity. In the case of this gorge, with its immense length and countless tributary chasms, the view Cardenas obtained was akin to a dog's discovery of the moon. It has practically been several times re-discovered. Indeed, each person who first looks into the abyss has a sensation of being a discoverer, for the scene is so weird and lonely and so incomprehensible in its novelty that one feels that it could never have been viewed before. And it IS rather a discovery for each individual, because no amount of verbal or pictorial description can ever fully prepare the spectator for, the sublime reality. Even when one becomes familiar with the incomparable spectacle it never ceases to astonish. A recent writer has well said: "The sublimity of the Pyramids is endurable, but at the rim of the Grand Canyon we feel outdone."* Outdone is exactly the right word. Nowhere else can man's insignificance be so burned into his soul as here, where his ingenuity and power count for naught.
* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.
Cardenas, after all, was only one of the discoverers. He was merely the first WHITE man who saw it. When was it that the first MAN recoiled from the edge of that then actually unknown masterpiece of the Water-gods, who so persistently plied their tools in the forgotten ages? He was the real discoverer and he will never be known. As applied to new countries—new to our race—the term "unknown" is relative. Each fresh explorer considers his the deed that shall permanently be recorded, no matter who has gone before, and the Patties and the Jedediah Smiths are forgotten. In these later years some who have dared the terrors of the merciless river in the Grand Canyon spoke of it as the "Great Unknown," forgetting the deed of Powell; and when Lieutenant Wheeler laboriously succeeded in dragging his boats up to the mouth of Diamond Creek, he said: "NOW the exploration is completed." HE forgot the deed of Powell. A recent writer mentions the north-western corner of Arizona as a "mysterious wilderness."* He forgot that it was thoroughly explored years ago. Wilderness it may be, if that means sparsely settled, but mysterious?—no. It is all known and on record.
* Ray Stannard Baker, Century Magazine, May, 1902.
The Grand Canyon may be likened to an inverted mountain range. Imagine a great mountain chain cast upside down in plaster. Then all the former ridges and spurs of the range become tributary canyons and gulches running back twenty or thirty miles into the surrounding country, growing shallower and shallower as the distance increases from the central core, just as the great spurs and ridges of a mountain range, descending, melt finally into the plain. Often there are parts where the central gorge is narrow and precipitous, just as a mountain range frequently possesses mighty precipices. But it is an error to think of great canyons as mere slits in the ground, dark and gloomy, like a deep well from whose depths stars may be sighted at midday. Minor canyons sometimes approach this character, as, for example, the canyon of the upper Virgen, called Parunuweap, fifteen hundred feet deep and no more than twenty to thirty feet wide, with vertical walls, but I have never been in a canyon from which stars were visible in daylight, nor have I ever known anyone who had. The light is about the same as that at the bottom of a narrow street flanked by very high buildings. The walls may sometimes be gloomy from their colour, or may seem so from the circumstances under which one views them, but aside from the fact that any deep, shut-in valley or canyon may become oppressive, there is nothing specially gloomy about a deep canyon. The sun usually falls more or less in every canyon, no matter how narrow or deep. It may fall to the very bottom most of the day, or only for an hour or two, depending on the trend of the canyon with reference to the sun's course. At the bottom of the Kanab where it joins the Grand, the sunlight in November remains in the bottom just two hours, but outside in the main gorge the time is very much longer.
The walls of a great canyon, and usually a small one, are terraced; seldom are they wholly vertical for their entire height, though occasionally they may approach this condition on one side or the other, and more rarely on both sides at once, depending on the geological formations of the locality. Owing to the immense height of the walls of such canyons as those on the Colorado, the cliffs frequently appear perpendicular when they are far from it, just as a mountain peak often seems to tower over one's head when in reality it may be a considerable distance off. In the nature of the formation and development of canyons, they could not long retain continuous vertical walls. What Powell calls the "recession of cliffs" comes into play. The erosive and corrasive power of water being the chief land sculptors, it is evident that there will be a continual wearing down of the faces of the bounding cliffs. The softer beds will be cut away faster than the harder, and where these underlie the harder the latter will be undermined and fall. Every canyon is always widening at its top and sides, through the action of rain, frost, and wind, as well as deepening through the action of its flowing stream. EROSION is this power which carves away the cliffs, and CORRASION the one which saws at the bottom, the latter term, in geological nomenclature, meaning the cutting power of running water.* This cutting power varies according to the declivity and the amount of sediment carried in suspension. It is plain that a stream having great declivity will be able to carry more sediment than one having little, and in a barren country would always be highly charged with sand, which would cut and scour the bed of the channel like a grindstone. As Dutton says, a river cuts, however, only its own width, the rest of a canyon being the "work of the forces of erosion, the wind, frost, and rain." That is why we have canyons. The powers of erosion are far slower than those of corrasion, especially in an arid region, because they are intermittent. Where rocks take a polish, as in Marble Canyon, the scouring and polishing work of corrasion is seen in the shining bright surface as far as the water rises. This all belongs to the romance of the Water-gods, those marvellous land sculptors.
* The introduction of this subject may seem unnecessary to the
general reader, but no just comprehension of this river can be reached
without some knowledge of the forces creating its chasms.
To produce canyons like those of the Colorado, peculiar and unusual conditions are necessary. There must exist a vast region lying high above sea-level. This region must be arid. Out of it must rise separated mountain masses to such heights that they shall be well watered. These most elevated regions alone having abundant rain and snowfall, torrential streams are generated and poured down upon the arid wastes, where they persistently scour their beds, ploughing deep channels