Frederick Samuel Dellenbaugh

“ 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. ”

“ I kept studying the sky; watching the stars through the ragged breaks in the flying clouds. The night was silent after the gale. The river flowed on with little noise. The fire flickered and flickered, and the cottonwoods appeared dark and strange as I finally went to sleep. I had not been long in that happy state before I saw some men trying to steal our boats on which our lives depended and I immediately attacked them, pinning one to the ground. It was only Jones I was holding down, and his shouts and struggles to reach his pistol woke me, and startled the camp. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Beautiful is the wilderness at all times, at all times lovely, but under the spell of the twilight it seems to enfold one in a tender embrace, pushing back the sordid, the commonplace, and obliterating those magnified nothings that form the weary burden of civilised man. With keen appreciation we tramped steadily on till at last we perceived through the night gloom the cheerful flicker of our camp-fire, a sight always welcome, for the camp-fire to the explorer is home.
At eight the next morning our business was resumed with the Major happy in his accustomed place. ”

“ Valley, mountain, everything was a solid expanse of white, the only dark spot being our red blankets as we threw back the paulin. The sky was grey and sullen. More snow was in the air. As soon as breakfast was eaten we slung our pack, saddled, and rode up the valley, following as well as we could the directions given by the bishop. Neither Jack nor I had been this way before. We could see the slight depression in the surface of the snow which indicated a waggon-rut beneath, and by that token continued up the ever-narrowing valley; the slopes sprinkled by large pine trees. ”

“ A delightful episode of this camp was a row which several of us made up the Yampa in the moonlight. As far as we went the current was not swift and we were able to pull gently along under the great cliffs in shadows made luminous by the brilliancy of the moon. A song the Major was fond of singing, Softly and Sweetly it Comes from Afar, almost involuntarily, sprang from us all, though our great songster, Jack, was not with us. Jack had an extensive repertory, an excellent voice, and a hearty, exuberant spirit. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The addition of the almost equal volume of the Grand—indeed it was now a little greater owing to extra heavy rains along its course—doubled the depth and velocity of the river till it swirled on into the new canyon before us with a fierce, threatening intensity, sapping the flat sand-bank on which our camp was laid and rapidly eating it away. Large masses with a sudden splash would drop out of sight and dissolve like sugar in a cup of tea. We were obliged to be on the watch lest the moorings of the boats should be loosened, allowing them to sweep pell-mell before us down the gorge. ”

“ There was no use changing wet clothes for dry ones from the rubber bags as long as the rain fell, and it increased till water was dashing off the walls in streams. The thunder roared and crashed as if it were knocking the cliffs about to rearrange them all, and a deluge swept down in which Andy's struggling little fire died with hardly a sputter. The only thing remaining for us to do was to all stand with our backs against the foot of the wall, which was still warm from the day, and wait for something else to happen. ”

“ Starting down again on Wednesday morning we ran past the Paradise and heard a little bird singing there amidst the spray and mosses, a delicate note seeming out of place amidst such gigantic desolation. Only the boom of great cannon or the tone of some enormous organ pipe would be correct with the surroundings. The walls at the water's edge were vertical for long distances up to eight hundred feet, and being now in all about three thousand feet and not a great ways apart, the outlook ahead was something almost overpowering in its deep suggestion of mysterious and untold realms to come. ”

“ All day long we travelled through sandy hills gradually rising toward the plateau, the foot-hills of which we reached late in the afternoon. We had followed a waggon road with our pack-train up to this point, but here we struck off on a trail that was said to be a shorter way to the canyon we were aiming for, and a little before sunset we came to the brink of a steep slope, almost a cliff, where a picturesque, a romantic view opened before us. Below stretched away to the south a narrow, deep, and sharply defined valley or canyon one-eighth mile wide, the bottom of which seemed perfectly flat. ”

“ The whole canyon was exceedingly beautiful, nevertheless we did not mourn when late in the afternoon, just after running the last rapid, the magnificent cliffs fell back and we saw more sky than at any time since leaving Brown's Park. On the right the rocks melted away into beautiful rainbow-coloured hills while on the left they remained steep, though retreating a mile or so from the water. The stretch of sky seemed enormous. Breathing appeared to be easier. The eye grows weary with the short range views, and yearns for space in which to roam.
The valley we were now in was not long ”

“ We threw the things in as fast as we could, jammed a bag of flour against the leak in the Dean, battened down the hatches, threw our rifles into the bottom of the standing rooms where the water and sand washed unheeded over them, and jumped to our oars. The crew of the Cañonita held our stern till the bow swung out into the river, and then at the signal Jack and I laid to with all our strength—to shoot clear of an enormous rock about fifty feet below against which the fierce current was dashing. ”

“ The river was narrow and deep, with a high velocity, and the channel was filled with enormous rocks. Two hours of the hardest kind of work in and out of the water, climbing over gigantic boulders along the bank, lifting the boats and sliding them on driftwood skids, tugging, pulling, shoving every minute with might and main put us at the bottom. No sooner were we past this one than we engaged in a similar battle with another of the same nature, and below it we stopped for dinner, amidst some huge boulders under a hackberry tree, near another roarer. ”

“ We saw a band of twenty wild horses spinning across the plain one behind another like a train of railway cars, a huge stallion playing locomotive. Perhaps my broncho felt the call of the band! Darkness dropped down on us before we could get to the spring. We had to make a camp that was not exactly dry, though there was no drinking water, for a drizzling rain, half snow, set in, the snow serving to hold the accompanying rain on the surface. We were wading in slush and it was a task to find a decent place for one's blankets. Jones and I bunked together. ”

“ We had all become fast true friends at once. With the exception of the Major, whom I had first met about two months before, and Frank whom I had known for a year or two, I had been acquainted with them only since we had met on the train on the way out.
In the scant shelter of some greasewood bushes we devoured the repast which the morning's exercise and the crisp air had made so welcome, and each drank several cups of tea dipped from the camp-kettle wherein Andy had boiled it. ”

“ As the sun sank to the western edge of the outer world we were rushing down a long straight stretch of canyon, and the colossal precipices looming on all sides, as well as dead ahead across our pathway, positively appeared about to overwhelm the entire river by their ponderous magnificence, burnished at their summits by the dying sun. ”

“ The following day, Thursday, November 21st, I covered a wide territory, climbing five cinder-cones a great distance apart and each quite high. Several times I crossed recent moccasin tracks, but met no natives, and at nightfall I was still a long way from my camp. When the darkness became so dense that I could not see even faint outlines I took a star for guidance till clouds blotted it out. Then I was completely adrift in a sea of mountains. I could not tell one direction from another. Throwing the reins on the broncho's neck I sat back in my saddle to see what would come of it. ”

“ We kept on at as rapid a gait as the canyon would permit, though it was easier than in March, when the numerous miners had not yet broken a way by their ingress and egress in search of the fabulous gold that was supposed to exist somewhere in the inaccessibility of the great chasm. The harder a locality is to arrive at the bigger the stories of its wealth, while often in the attempts to reach it the prospector treads heedlessly ground that holds fortunes up to his very eyes. ”

“ On each side were the steep, ragged granitic walls, with the tumultuous waters lashing and pounding against them in a way that precluded all idea of portage or let-down. It needed no second glance to tell us that there was only one way of getting below. If the rocks did not stop us we could "cross to Killiloo," and when a driving rain had ceased Andy gathered the few sticks of driftwood available for a fire, by which he prepared some dinner in advance of the experiment. ”

“ The sun burned down from a clear sky that melted black into eternal space. The yellow sand threw the hot rays upward, and so also did the smooth bare rock. No bird, no bee, no thing of life could be seen. I came to a whitish cliff upon which I thought there might be water-pockets, and I mounted by a steep slope of broken stones. Suddenly, almost within touch, I saw before me a golden yellow rattlesnake gliding upward in the direction I was going along the cliff wall. I killed it with a stone, and cut off the rattles and continued my reconnaissance. ”

“ The Kaibab was too far away for us to go there to hunt deer, and there were none around the spring, though one night at supper-time, the western sky being a broad sweep of deep orange, we saw a large wild animal of some sort on the crest of the hill silhouetted against the colour. I started for it with my rifle, but of course it did not wait; no animal ever does if he can help it, unless he is carnivorous and famished. The weather remained generally fair, though one day we had a wild gale that nearly relieved us of the tent in the midst of thick flurries of snow. ”

“ Crags about us projected into the canyon, and I was inspired to creep out upon a long finger of sandstone where I could sit astride as on a horse and comfortably peer down into the abyss. It was an absolutely safe place, but Beaman and Clem feared the crag might break off with me, and they compelled me to come back to relieve their minds. Seldom does one have such a chance to see below as well as I could there. ”