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J. W. Powell - Canyons of the Colorado
a huge tooth of marble on one side seems to be set between two teeth on the opposite; and I can also get
glimpses of walls standing away back from the river, while over my head are mural escarpments not
possible to be scaled.
Cataract Canyon is 41 miles long. The walls are 1,300 feet high at its head, and they gradually increase in
altitude to a point about halfway down, where they are 2,700 feet, and then decrease to 1,300 feet at the
foot. Narrow Canyon is 9 1/2 miles long, with walls 1,300 feet in height at the head and coming down to
the water at the foot.
There is very little vegetation in this canyon or in the adjacent country. Just at the junction of the Grand
and Green there are a number of hackberry trees; and along the entire length of Cataract Canyon the
high-water line is marked by scattered trees of the same species. A few nut pines and cedars are found,
and occasionally a redbud or Judas tree; but the general aspect of the canyons and of the adjacent country
is that of naked rock.
The distance through Glen Canyon is 149 miles. Its walls vary in height from 200 or 300 to 1,600 feet.
Marble Canyon is 65 1/2 miles long. At its head it is 200 feet deep, and it steadily increases in depth to
its foot, where its walls are 3,500 feet high.
CHAPTER XI. FROM THE LITTLE COLORADO TO THE FOOT
OF THE GRAND CANYON.
August 13. - We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to
a common, stake, chafe each other as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for
their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations remaining. The flour has been
resifted through the mosquito-net sieve; the spoiled bacon has been dried and the worst of it boiled; the
few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun and reshrunken to their normal bulk. The sugar
has all melted and gone on its way down the river. But we have a large sack of coffee. The lightening of
the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better and we shall have but little to carry when we
make a portage.
We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance as
it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs that rise to the world above; the waves are but puny
ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands or lost among the boulders.
We have an unknown distance yet to run, an unknown river to explore. What falls there are, we know
not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well!
we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this
morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.
With some eagerness and some anxiety and some misgiving we enter the canyon below and are carried
along by the swift water through walls which rise from its very edge. They have the same structure that
we noticed yesterday - tiers of irregular shelves below, and, above these, steep slopes to the foot of
marble cliffs. We run six miles in a little more than half an hour and emerge into a more open portion of
the canyon, where high hills and ledges of rock intervene between the river and the distant walls. Just at
the head of this open place the river runs across a dike; that is, a fissure in the rocks, open to depths
below, was filled with eruptive matter, and this on cooling was harder than the rocks through which the
crevice was made, and when these were washed away the harder volcanic matter remained as a wall, and
the river has cut a gateway through it several hundred feet high and as many wide. As it crosses the wall,
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