The Romance of the Colorado River | Page 9

as Thames, Danube, Hudson, Mississippi. Through
the centuries their kindly waters have borne down ancestral argosies of
profit without number, establishing thus the wealth and happiness of
the people. Well have rivers been termed the "Arteries of Commerce";
well, also, may they be considered the binding links of civilisation.
Then, by contrast, it is all the more remarkable to meet with one great
river which is none of these helpful things, but which, on the contrary,
is a veritable dragon, loud in its dangerous lair, defiant, fierce,
opposing utility everywhere, refusing absolutely to be bridled by
Commerce, perpetuating a wilderness, prohibiting mankind's
encroachments, and in its immediate tide presenting a formidable host
of snarling waters whose angry roar, reverberating wildly league after
league between giant rock-walls carved through the bowels of the earth,
heralds the impossibility of human conquest and smothers hope. From
the tiny rivulets of its snowy birth to the ferocious tidal bore where it
dies in the sea, it wages a ceaseless battle as sublime as it is terrible and
unique. Such is the great Colorado River of the West, rising amidst the
fountains of the beautiful Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, where
also are brought forth the gentler Columbia and the mighty,
far-reaching Missouri. Whirling down ten thousand feet in some two
thousand miles, it meets the hot level of the Red Sea, once the Sea of
Cortes, now the Gulf of California, in tumult and turmoil. In this long
run it is cliff bound nine-tenths of the way, and the whole country
drained by it and its tributaries has been wrought by the waters and
winds of ages into multitudinous plateaus and canyons. The canyons of
its tributaries often rival in grandeur those of the main stream itself, and
the tributaries receive other canyons equally magnificent, so that we see
here a stupendous system of gorges and tributary gorges, which, even

now bewildering, were to the early pioneer practically prohibitory.
Water is the master sculptor in this weird, wonderful land, yet one
could there die easily of thirst. Notwithstanding the gigantic work
accomplished, water, except on the river, is scarce. Often for months
the soil of the valleys and plains never feels rain; even dew is unknown.
In this arid region much of the vegetation is set with thorns, and some
of the animals are made to match the vegetation. A knowledge of this
forbidding area, now robbed of some of its old terrors by the facilities
in transportation, has been finally gained only by a long series of
persistent efforts, attended by dangers, privations, reverses,
discouragements, and disasters innumerable. The Amerind,* the red
man, roamed its wild valleys. Some tribes built stone houses whose
ruins are now found overlooking its waters, even in the depths of the
Grand Canyon itself, or in the cliffs along the more accessible
tributaries, cultivating in the bottoms their crops. Lands were also tilled
along the extreme lower reaches, where the great rock-walls fall back
and alluvial soils border the stream. Here and there the Amerind also
crossed it, when occasion required, on the great intertribal highways
which are found in all districts, but it was neither one thing nor another
to him.
*This name is a substitute for the misnomer "Indian." Its use avoids
confusion.
So the river rolled on through its solemn canyons in primeval freedom,
unvexed by the tampering and meddling of man. The Spaniards, after
the picturesque conquest of the luckless Aztecs, were eagerly searching
for new fields of profitable battle, and then they dreamed of finding
among the mysteries of the alluring northland, stretching so far away
into the Unknown, a repetition of towns as populous, as wealthy in pure
gold, as those of the valley of Mexico whose despoiled treasures had
fired the cupidity of Europe and had crammed the strong boxes of the
Spanish king. And there might be towns even richer! Who could say?
An Amerind named Tejo, who belonged to Guzman when he was
president of New Spain, that is, about 1530, told of journeys he had
made with his father, when a boy, to trade in the far north where he saw
very large villages like Mexico, especially seven large towns full of

silver-workers, forty days' journey through the wilderness. This
welcome story was fuel to the fire. Guzman organised a party and
started for these wonderful seven cities, but numerous difficulties
prevented the fulfilment of his plans, and caused a halt after traversing
but a small portion of the distance. Cortes had now also returned from a
visit to Spain, and he and Guzman were at the point of the sword. Then
shortly arrived from the north (1536), after incredible wanderings
between the Mississippi and the Rio Grande, that man of wonderful
endurance, Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca,* with his