Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

“ A more extraordinary, bewildering landscape, both as to form and colour, could hardly be found in all the world. Winding our way down to the barren valley, in itself more a high plateau than a valley, we travelled the rest of the day in the direction of the great cliffs. The sun was just gone when we reached the first low line, and passing through a gap turned into a side gulch thickly studded with cedars, where we saw before us two white-covered waggons, two or three camp-fires blazing, and friends. We heard a hearty voice cry, "Tirtaan Aigles dis wai!" ”

“ Here flourishes the cactus, that rose of the desert, its lovely blossoms red, yellow, and white, illuminating in spring the arid wastes. The soft green of its stems and the multiplicity of its forms and species, are a constant delight. It writhes and struggles across the hot earth, or spreads out silver-spined branches into a tree-like bush, or, in the great pitahaya, rises in fierce dignity like a monitor against the deep blue sky. ”

“ As New France developed into Canada the voyageur became a familiar and distinct character; a creation of the New World. He was as competent with a canoe as was his Spanish brother, the vaquero, with the horse. We meet him constantly in the Wilderness, and all the waterways leading to it, his airy verses echoing through the forest till the sombre pine trees seemed more lightly to wave their drooping branches; or dying across limitless stretches of prairie, in conflict, perhaps, with the stranger notes of some Amerindian chant. ”

“ The cabins were packed with unusual care, the life-preservers were inflated and put where they could be quickly seized on the approach to a bad descent, and at four o'clock we were afloat. The wide horizon vanished. The cliffs, red and majestic, rose at one bound to a height of about 2000 feet on each side, the most abrupt and magnificent gateway to a canyon imaginable. We entered slowly, for the current in the beginning is not swift, and we watched the mighty precipices while they appeared to fold themselves together behind and shut us more than ever away from the surrounding wilderness. ”

“ The universal dread of the Colorado and its gorges had by this time considerably augmented. The public imagination pictured the roaring flood ploughing its dismal channel through dark subterranean galleries where human life would not be worth a single drop of tossing spray; or leaping at a bound over precipices beside which the seething plunge of Niagara was but a toy. No one could deny these weird tales. No one knew. But Powell was fortified by Science, and he surmised that nowhere would he encounter any obstruction which his ingenuity could not surmount. ”

“ The hardships of the explorers to the mouth of the Columbia passed unheeded, for the men who now came to match nerve and muscle against the entrenched mystery were in their natural element when battling with danger and difficulty in the uplifting air, and, like the eagle sailing high, were never more at home than when pushing their daring tread into some virgin valley, where falling waters broke the calm and fostered multitudes of beaver, where game bounded from every nook and glade, and the rich bunch-grass fattened their patient horses. ”

“ A prettier mountain region than this could not be imagined, while the magnificent outlook to the south and east across the broken country was a bewildering sight, especially as the night enveloped it, deepening the mystery of its entangled gorges and cliffs. From every point we could see the Navajo Mountain and at least we knew what there was at the foot of its majestic northern slope. I climbed far above camp and crossing over a promontory looked down upon the nebulous region to the eastward that we were to fathom, and it seemed to me one of the most interesting sights I had ever beheld. ”

“ CHAPTER I Extent of the Wilderness—The First White Man—The Backbone of the Continent—A Vanished Sea and a Petrified Ocean—The Biggest Trees—The Spike of Gold.
The natural habitat of man is the wilderness. No matter how civilised he may become, his heart turns with longing to the woods, to the sea, and to the mountains. There he is unconventional; animals are his compeers, the forest his friend, the free-flowing stream nectar to his lips. Civilised peoples, after all, are but wanderers driven from the Garden of Eden by the sword of necessity. ”

“ The great Western wilderness was now no longer “unknown” to white men. By the year 1840 the American had traversed it throughout, excepting the canyons of the Colorado, which yet remained, at least below the mouth of Grand River, almost as much of a problem as before the fur trade was born. Like some antediluvian monster the wild torrent stretched a foaming barrier miles on miles from the mountains of the north to the seas of the south, fortified in a rock-bound lair, roaring defiance at conquistadore, padre, and trapper alike. ”

“ Through half of the next rapid we made a let-down, running the remainder, and then, running two more below which were easy, we could see through to the end of the canyon, and the picture framed by the precipices was beautiful. The world seemed suddenly to open out before us, and in the middle of it, clear and strong against a sky of azure, accented by the daylight moon, stood the Unknown Mountains, weird and silent in their untrodden mystery. ”

“ One hardly can believe that a large number of these people once had their villages and their farms east of the Mississippi, where the factory and the mowing-machine now hold sway, but in the South-west wherever we tread we discover some indication of the old population: a trail, an irrigating ditch, a tree for a ladder, house walls, rock pictures, etc., and often, far from the tumult of the modern world, we seem almost to catch the sigh of a voice, or the rustle of a blanket, in the breeze that whispers through the old piñon tree. ”

“ Down, and down, and ever down, roaring and leaping and throwing its spiteful spray against the hampering rocks the terrible river ran, carrying our boats along with it like little wisps of straw in the midst of a Niagara, the terraced walls around us sometimes fantastically eroded into galleries, balconies, alcoves, and Gothic caves that lent to them an additional weird and wonderful aspect, while the reverberating turmoil of the ever-descending flood was like some extravagant musical accompaniment to the extraordinary panorama flitting past of rock sculpture and bounding cliffs. ”

“ Bottom up the boat was clear of the rapid and sweeping on down with the swift, boiling current toward a dark bend. The Cañonita was nowhere to be seen. No living thing was visible. The narrow black gorge rose in sombre majesty to the everlasting sky. What was a mere human life or two in the span of eternity? I was about preparing to climb up on the bottom of the boat when I perceived Jones clinging to the ring in the stern, and in another second the Major and Jack shot up alongside as if from a gun. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So by these waterways, numerously ramifying from the mouth of the St. Lawrence into the vast western Unknown, the Frenchmen, with the beautiful birch-bark canoe of the Amerind, whose skill they also speedily acquired, entered the Wilderness with a sailor's light-heartedness, singing their gay chansons as they paddled along; songs with little sense but much rhythm, like all the ditties sailors use for expediting their labours, which, like rowing or paddling, require to be accomplished in unison. ”

“ Breakfast became a stirring debating scene, when plump into the midst of our hilarity, as if to emphasise the declarations of the nervous member, there came a sharp call from beyond a line of bushes. Almost on the instant appeared an Indian mounted on a dark bay horse trotting towards us exclaiming, "How, how!" and holding out his hand in token of friendship. His long black hair hung behind in two tails braided with red and black cotton cloth. The scalp at the part was painted vermilion, and around each eye was a ring of the same bright colour. ”

“ In the outer world the sun was low, though it had long been gone to us, and the blue haze of approaching night was drawing a veil of strange uncertainty among the cliffs, while far above, the upper portions of the mighty eastern walls, at all times of gorgeous hue, were now beautifully enriched by the last hot radiance of the western sky. Such a view as this was worth all the labour we had accomplished. When the end of this marvellous piece of canyon was reached a small river was found to enter on the left through a narrow gorge like the main canyon. ”

“ At our feet was the Virgin Valley with the green fields of Tokerville, while beyond rose magnificent cliffs culminating to the north-west in the giant buttes and precipices of the Mookoontoweap, or, as the Mormons call it, Little Zion Valley. Topping the whole sweep of magnificent kaleidoscopic topography were the Pine Valley Mountains and the lofty cliffs of the Colob and Markargunt plateaus. It has ever since been my opinion that few outlooks in all the world are superior for colour and form to that stretching north from the northern part of the Hurricane Ledge. ”