The Romance of the Colorado River. Frederick Samuel DellenbaughЧитать онлайн книгу.
this monstrous growth is a revelation, so unexpected is it. A group as large as one's head, pure white, on the extremity of a dagger-covered bough, it is like an angel amidst bayonets. The pitahaya, often more than thirty feet high and twelve to twenty-four inches diameter, is a fit companion for the Joshua, with an equally startling blossom.
"To go out on the desert … and meet these cacti is like whispering into the ear of the Sphinx, and listening at her locked lips, … and to go out in April and see them suddenly abloom is as though the lips of the Sphinx should part and utter solemn words. A bunch of white flowers at the tip of the obelisk, flowers springing white and wonderful out of this dead, gaunt, prickly thing—is not that Nature's consummate miracle, a symbol of resurrection more profound than the lily of the fields."*
* Harriet Monroe, Atlantic Monthly, June, 1902.
Then there is the glorious ocotillo, waving its long, slender wands from the ground-centre, each green with its myriad little lance-shaped leaves, and bursting at the end into a scarlet flame of blossoms dazzling in the burning sunlight. Near by springs up the Barrel cactus, a forbidding column no one dares touch. A little farther is the "yant" of the Pai Ute, with leaves fringed with teeth like its kind, the Agaves. This is a source of food for the native, who roasts the asparagus-like tip starting up in the spring, and he also takes the whole head, and, trimming off the outer leaves, bakes it in pits, whereby it is full of sweetness like thick molasses. The inner pulp is dried in sheets and laid away. Near by, the Pinyon tree in the autumn sheds its delicious nuts by the bushel, and meanwhile there are many full, nutritious grass seeds, the kind called "ak" by the Pai Utes almost equalling wheat in the size of its kernel. In the lowlands grows the stolid mesquite tree, more underground than above, whose roots furnish excellent firewood—albeit they must be broken up with a sledge hammer, for no axe will stand the impact. Near it may be seen huge bunches of grass (or perhaps straw would describe it better), which the white man gathers for hay with a huge hoe. Then there is the ever-present, friendly sage-brush, miniature oak trees, with branch and trunk, so beautiful. It grows, as a rule, about two feet high, but I have seen it higher than my head; that is, at least six feet. Beneath its spreading shade in the south lurks the Gila Monster, terrible in name at any rate, a fearful object to look upon, a remnant of antediluvian times, a huge, clumsy, two-foot lizard. The horned toad is quite as forbidding in appearance, but he is a harmless little thing. Here we are in the rattlesnake's paradise. Nine species are found along the Mexican border; and no wonder. The country seems made for them—the rocks, cliffs, canyons, pitahayas, Joshuas, and all the rest of it. Notwithstanding their venom they have beauty, and when one is seen at the bottom of some lonely, unfrequented canyon, tail buzzing, head erect, and defiant, glistening eyes, a man feels like apologising for the intrusion. Above in the limpid sunlight floats the great eagle, deadly enemy of the rattlesnake; from a near-by bush the exquisite song of the mocking-bird trills out, and far up the rocks the hoof-strokes of the mountain sheep strike with a rattle of stones that seems music in the crystal air. Yonder the wild turkey calls from the pine trees, or we hark to the whir of the grouse or the pine-hen. Noisy magpies startle the silence of the northern districts, and the sage-hen and the rabbit everywhere break the solitude of your walk. Turn up a stone and sometimes you see a revengeful scorpion: anon the huge tarantula comes forth to look at the camp-fire. As one sits resting on a barren ledge, the little swifts come out to make his acquaintance. Whistle softly and a bright-coated fellow will run up even upon your shoulder to show his appreciation of the Swan Song. Antelope dart scornfully away across the open plains, and the little coyote halts in his course to turn the inquisitive gaze of his pretty bright eyes upon this new animal crossing his path. The timber wolf, not satisfied with staring, follows, perhaps, as if enjoying company, at the same time occasionally licking his chaps. When the sun goes down his long-drawn bark rolls out into the clear winter sky like a song to the evening star, rendering the blaze of the camp-fire all the more comfortable. Under the moonlight the sharper bark of the coyote swells a chorus from the cliffs, and the rich note of the night-storm is accentuated by the long screech of the puma prowling on the heights. In daylight his brother, the wild-cat, reminds one of Tabby at home by the fireside. There is the lynx, too, among the rocks; and on the higher planes the deer, elk, and bear have their homes. In Green River Valley once roamed thousands of bison. The more arid districts have the fewest large animals, and conversely the more humid the most, though in the latter districts the fauna and flora approach that of the eastern part of the continent, while as the former are approached the difference grows wider and wider, till in the southern lowlands there is no resemblance to eastern types at all. Once the streams everywhere had thousands of happy beaver, with their homes in the river banks, or in waters deepened by their clever dams. Otter, too, were there. The larger rivers are not favourable for fish on account of the vast amount of sediment, but in the smaller, especially in the mountain streams, trout were abundant. In Green River occurs a salmon-trout attaining a length of at least four feet. This is also found in the Colorado proper, where another fish, with a humpback, is to be caught. I do not know the name of this, but imagine it the same as has in latter days been called "squaw-fish."
All over the region the rocks are seamed by mineral veins. Some of these have already poured forth millions of dollars, while others await a discoverer. On the river itself gold is found in the sands; and the small alluvial bottoms that occur in Glen Canyon, and a few gravel bars in the Grand, have been somewhat profitably worked, though necessarily on a small scale. The granite walls of the Grand Canyon bear innumerable veins, but as prospecting is there so difficult it will be many a long year before the best are found. The search for mineral veins has done much to make the farther parts known, just as the earlier search for beaver took white men for the first time into the fastnesses of the great mountains, and earlier the effort to save the souls of the natives marked their main trails into the wilderness.
This sketch of the Basin of the Colorado is most inadequate, but the scope of this volume prevents amplification in this direction. These few pages, however, will better enable the reader to comprehend the labours of the padres, the trappers, and the explorers, some account of whose doings is presented in the following chapters.*
* In connection with the subject of erosion and corrasion the reader
is advised to study the following works, which are the standards: The
Exploration of the Colorado of the West, and the Geology of the Uinta
Mountains, by J. W. Powell; The Henry Mountains, by G. K. Gilbert; The
Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah, and The Tertiary History of the
Grand Canyon District, by C. E. Dutton.
CHAPTER IV
Onate, 1604, Crosses Arizona to the Colorado—A Remarkable Ancient Ruin Discovered by Padre Kino, 1694—Padre Garces Sees the Grand Canyon and Visits Oraibi, 1776—The Great Entrada of Padre Escalante across Green River to Utah Lake, 1776—Death of Garces Ends the Entrada Period, 1781.
In the historical development of the Basin of the Colorado four, chief epochs are apparent. The discovery of the river, as already outlined in previous chapters, is the first; second, the entradas of the padres; third, the wanderings of the trappers; and fourth, the expeditions of the explorers. These epochs are replete with interesting and romantic incidents, new discoveries; starvations; battles; massacres; lonely, dangerous journeys, etc., which can only be touched upon in a volume of the present size. Dr. Coues placed the diary of Garces, one of the chief actors of this great four-act life-drama, in accessible shape, and had not his lamented death interfered he would have put students under further obligation to him.
Preliminary to the entradas of the padres, Don Antonio de Espejo, in 1583, went from the Rio Grande to Moki and westward to a mountain, probably one of the San Francisco group, but he did not see the Colorado. Twenty-one years elapsed before a white man again ventured into this region. In 1604, Don Juan de Onate, the wealthy governor of New Mexico, determined to cross from his headquarters at the village of San Juan on the Rio Grande, by this route to the South Sea, and, accompanied by thirty soldiers and two padres, he