faced the sublime,
unfathomed depths that here lay in his course. Only one month's rations
remained as a reliance in this terrible passage. Powell says: "We have
an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What
falls there are we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know
not; what walk rise over the river, we know not.... The men talk as
cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to
me the cheer is sombre and the jests are ghastly." With anxiety and much
misgiving they drifted on between mile-high cliffs, rising terrace on
terrace to the very sky itself. Even now, when the dangers are known and
tested, no man lives who can enter the great chasm for a voyage to the
other end without feeling anxiety as to the result, and the more anxiety
he feels, the more probability there is that he will pass the barriers
safely. Running rapids and passing falls by portages and let-downs,
they met no formidable obstacle till August 14th, when they ran into a
granite formation, the "First Granite Gorge." While the gorge was wide
above, it grew narrower as the river level was approached, till the
walls were closer than anywhere farther up; and they were ragged and
serrated. They had noticed that hard rocks had produced bad river, and
soft rocks smooth water; now they were in a series of rocks harder than
any before encountered. There was absolutely no way of telling what the
waters might do in such a formation, which ran up till a thousand feet
of it stood above their heads, supporting more than four thousand feet
more of sedimentary rocks, making a grand total of between five thousand
and six thousand feet. The same day on which they entered the granite
they arrived, after running, and portaging around, several bad rapids,
at a terrific fall, announced by a loud roar like the steady boom of
Niagara, reverberating back and forth from wall to wall, and filling the
whole gorge with its ominous note. The river was beaten to a solid sheet
of reeling foam for a third of a mile. There was but one choice, but one
path for the boats, and that lay through the midst of it, for on each
side the waves pounded violently against the jagged cliffs which so
closely hemmed them in. Men might climb up to the top of the granite
and find their way around the obstruction, one thousand feet above it,
descending again a mile or two down, but they could not take the boats
over such a road. They must, therefore,