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Frederick S. Dellenbaugh - The Romance of the Colorado River
modern times. It is probably in the archives of Spain or Mexico, and its discovery would throw needed
light on the location of Tusayan and the course Cardenas followed.*** The distance of this whole region
from a convenient base of supplies, and its repellent character, prevented further operations at this period,
and when these explorers traced their disappointed way homeward, the Colorado was not seen again by
white men for over half a century; and it was more than two hundred years before European eyes again
looked upon the Grand Canyon.
* A las barrancas del rio que puestos a el bado [lado?] de ellas parecia al otro bordo que auia mas de tres o
quatro leguas por el ayre." - Castaneda, in Winship's monograph. Fourteenth Ann. Rep. Bureau of
Ethnology, p. 429.
** For 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.
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