Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico Part 16

The bottom lands began to build up again with banks of gravel and clay, growing higher with every mile. The deciduous trees gave way to the desert growths: the cholla, "the shower of gold," and the palo verde and the other acacias. Here were the California or valley-quail; and lean, long-legged jack-rabbits. Here too were the coyotes, leaner than the rabbits, but efficient, shifty-eyed, and insolent. One could admire but could hardly respect them.

I had entertained hopes of reaching Parker that evening, but supposed the hour would be late if I reached it at all. Imagine my surprise, then, when at half-past four I heard the whistle of a train, and another turn revealed the Parker bridge. I had been told by others that it had taken them three or four days to reach this point on a low stage of water. Evidently the high water is much better for rapid and interesting travel.

Here at the bridge, which was a hundred feet above the river, was a dredge, and an old flat-bottomed steamboat, a relic of a few years past, before the government built the Laguna dam above Yuma, and condemned the Colorado as a navigable stream. Those were the days which the Colorado steamboat men recall with as much fond remembrance as the old-time boatmen of the Mississippi remember their palmy days.

In spite of the fact that the boats were flat-bottomed and small, it was real steamboating of an exciting nature at least. At times they beat up against the current as far as the mouth of the Rio Virgin. In low water the channels shifted back and forth first choked with sand on one side of the stream, then on the other. While the total fall from Fort Mojave, a few miles above Needles, to the Gulf is only 525 feet, considerable of that fall came in short sections, first with a swift descent, then in a quiet stretch. Even in the high-water stage I was finding some such places.

Parker stood a mile back from the river, on top of the level gravelly earth which stretched for miles on either side of the river clear to the mountains. This earth and gravel mixture was so firmly packed that even the cactus had a scant foothold. The town interested me for one reason only, this being, that I could get my meals for the evening and the following morning, instead of having to cook them myself. After I had eaten them, however, there was a question in my mind if my own cooking, bad as it was, would not have answered the purpose just as well. The place was a new railroad town on an Indian reservation, a town of great expectations, somewhat deferred.

It was not as interesting to me as my next stop at Ahrenburg, some fifty miles below Parker. This place while nothing but a collection of dilapidated adobe buildings, had an air of romance about it which was missing in the newer town. Ahrenburg had seen its day. Many years ago it was a busy mining camp, and the hope is entertained by the faithful who still reside in its picturesque adobe homes that it will come back with renewed vigour. Here at Ahrenburg I met a character who added greatly to the interest of my stay. He was a gigantic, raw-boned Frenchman, at that time engaged in the construction of a motor boat; but a miner, a sailor, and a soldier of fortune in many ways, one who had pried into many of the hidden corners of the country and had a graphic way of describing what he had seen. I was his guest until late that night, and was entertained royally on what humble fare he had to offer. We both intended to renew our acquaintance in the morning, but some prowling Mexicans near my boat, croaking frogs, and swarms of mosquitos gave me a restless night. With the first glimmer of daylight I was up, and half an hour later I was away on the flood.

This was my big day. The current was better than much of that above; I was getting used to the heat, and, instead of idly drifting, I pulled steadily at the oars. The river twisted back and forth in great loops with the strong current, as is usual, always on the outside of the loops, close to the overhanging banks. I would keep my boat in this current, with a wary lookout over my shoulder for fallen trees and sudden turns, which had a way of appearing when least expected. At some such places the stream was engaged at undermining the banks which rose eight and ten feet above the water. Occasional sections, containing tons of earth and covered with tall, slender willow trees, would topple over, falling on the water with the roar of a cannon or a continued salute of cannons; for the falling, once started, quite often extended for half a mile down the stream. At one such place eighteen trees fell in three minutes, and it would be safe to say that a hundred trees were included in the extended fall. The trees, sixty feet high, resembled a field of gigantic gra.s.s or unripened grain; the river was a reaper, cutting it away at the roots. Over they tumbled to be buried in the stream; the water would swirl and boil, earth and trees would disappear; then the ma.s.s of leaf-covered timber, freed of the earth, would wash away to lodge on the first sand-bar, and the formation of a new island or a new sh.o.r.e would begin.

Then again, the banks were barren, composed of gravel and clay, centuries older than the verdure-covered land, undisturbed, possibly, since some glacial period deposited it there. But a shifting of the channel directed the attack against these banks. Here the swift current would find a little irregularity on the surface and would begin its cutting. The sand-laden water bored exactly like an auger, in fast-cutting whirls. One such place I watched for a half-hour from the very beginning, until the undermined section, fourteen feet high, began to topple, and I pulled out to safety, but not far enough to escape a ducking in the resulting wave.

Below this, instead of a firm earth, it was a loose sand and gravel mixture twenty feet above the river. Here for half a mile the entire bank was moving, slowly at the top, gathering speed at the bottom.

While close to this I heard a peculiar hissing as of carbonated water all about me. At first I thought there were mineral springs underneath, but found the noise was caused by breaking air bubbles carried under the stream with the sands. All this day such phenomena continued, sliding sand-banks and tumbling jungles. In these latter places some cattle had suffered. Their trails ran parallel with the stream. No doubt they had one or two places where they drank cut down to the stream Knowing nothing of the cutting underneath, they had been precipitated into the flood, and now their carca.s.ses were food for swarms of vultures gathered for an unholy feast.

What powerful, graceful birds these scavengers are, stronger than the eagle even, tireless and seemingly motionless as they drift along searching every nook and cranny for their provender! But aside from a grudgingly given tribute of admiration for their power, one has about as much respect for them as for the equally graceful rattlesnake, that other product of nature which flourishes in this desert land.

The bird life along this lower part of the river was wonderful in its variety. The birds of the desert mingled with those of the fertile lands. The song-birds vied with those of gorgeous plume. Water-birds disported themselves in the mud-banks and sloughs. The smaller birds seemed to pay little attention to the nearness of the hawks.

Kingfisher perched on limbs overhanging the quiet pools, ready to drop at the faintest movement on the opaque water; the road-runner chased the festive lizard on the desert land back of the willows. Here also in the mesquite and giant cactus were thrush and Western meadow-larks and mocking-birds mimicking the call of the cat-bird. Down in the brush by the river was the happy little water-ousel, as cheerful in his way as the dumpy-built musical canyon wren. The Mexican crossbill appeared to have little fear of the migrating Northern shrike. There were warblers, cardinals, tanagers, waxwings, song-sparrows, and chickadees. Flitting droves of bush-t.i.t dropped on to slender weeds, scarcely bending them, so light were they. Then in a minute they were gone. In the swamps or marshes were countless red-winged blackbirds.

The most un.o.bservant person could not help but see birds here. I had expected to find water-fowl, for the Colorado delta is their breeding place; but I little expected to find so many land birds in the trees along the river. Instead of having a lonesome trip, every minute was filled with something new, interesting, and beautiful and I was having the time of my life.

I camped that night at Picachio,--meaning the Pocket,--eighty miles below Ahrenburg. This is still a mining district, but the pockets containing nuggets of gold which gave the place its name seem to have all been discovered at the time of the boom; the mining now done is in quartz ledges up on the sides of grim, mineral-stained hills. I was back in the land of rock again, a land showing the forces of nature in high points of foreign rock, shot up from beneath, penetrating the crust of the earth and in a few places emerging for a height of two hundred feet from the river itself, forming barren islands and great circling whirlpools, as large as that in the Niagara gorge, and I thought, for a while, almost as powerful. In one I attempted to keep to the short side of the river, but found it a difficult job, and one which took three times as long to accomplish as if I had allowed myself to be carried around the circle.

Then the land became level again, and the Chocolate Mountains were seen to the west. A hard wind blew across the stream, so that I had to drop my sunshade to prevent being carried against the rocks. This day I pa.s.sed a large irrigation ca.n.a.l leading off from the stream, the second such on the entire course of the Colorado. Here a friendly ranchman called to me from the sh.o.r.e and warned me of the Laguna dam some distance below. He said the water was backed up for three miles, so I would know when I was approaching it.

In spite of this warning, I nearly came to grief at the dam. The wind had shifted until it blew directly down the stream. The river, nearly a mile wide, still ran with a powerful current; I ceased rowing and drifted down, over waves much like those one would find on a lake driven by a heavy wind. I saw some high poles and a heavy electric cable stretched across the stream, and concluded that this was the beginning of the dam. I began to look ahead for some sign of a barrier across the stream, far below, but I could see nothing of the kind; then as I neared the poles it suddenly dawned on me that there was no raised barrier which diverted all the water through a sluice, but a submerged dam, over which the flood poured, and that the poles were on that dam.

My sail-like sunshade was dropped as quickly as I could do it, and, grabbing the oars, I began to pull for the California sh.o.r.e.

It was fortunate for me that I happened to be comparatively near the sh.o.r.e when I began rowing. As it was, I landed below the diverting ca.n.a.l, and about a hundred yards above the dam. On examination the dam proved to be a slope about fifty feet long. A man in charge of the machinery controlling the gates told me that the dam lacked seven feet of being a mile wide, and that approximately seven feet of water was going over the entire dam.

Great cement blocks and rocks had been dropped promiscuously below the dam to prevent it from being undermined. Even without the rocks it was doubtful if an uncovered boat could go through without upsetting. The great force of the water made a trough four or five feet lower than the river level, all water coming down the slope shooting underneath, while the river rolled back upstream. On two occasions boatmen had been carried over the dam. In each case the boat was wrecked, but the occupants were thrown out and escaped uninjured. I could not help but be amused, and feel a little uncomfortable too, when I saw how nearly I came to being wrecked here, after having escaped that fate in the rapids of the canyons.

I ran my boat back to the diverting ca.n.a.l, then rowed down to the ma.s.sive cement gates, which looked to me like a small replica of some of the locks on the Panama Ca.n.a.l. With the help of an Indian who was ready for a job my boat was taken out, rolled around the buildings on some sections of pipe, and slid over the bank into the ca.n.a.l below the gates.

In spite of a desire to spend some time inspecting the machinery of this great work,--which, with the ca.n.a.l and other improvements, had cost the government over a million dollars--I immediately resumed my rowing. It was mid-afternoon, and measured by the ca.n.a.l, which was direct, it was twelve miles to Yuma. But I soon learned that great winding curves made it much farther by the river. In some cases it nearly doubled back on itself. The wind had shifted by this time and blew against me so hard that it was almost useless to attempt rowing.

In another place there were no banks, and the water had spread for three miles in broken sloughs and around half-submerged islands, the one deep channel being lost in the maze of shallow ones. With these things to contend with it was dusk long before I neared the town, the twelve miles having stretched to twenty. Finally I saw a windmill partly submerged. Some distance away was a small ranch house also in the water. The house, with lights in the upper story, was a cheering sight; the windmill looked out of place in the midst of all this desolation of water. Soon other houses appeared with lights showing through the windows. Once I lost my way and spent a half hour in getting back to the right channel.

Somewhere in the dark, I never knew just when, I pa.s.sed the mouth of the Gila River. In a similar way in broad daylight I had pa.s.sed the Bill Williams Fork above Ahrenburg.

At last I neared the town. I could discern some buildings on top of a small hill, evidently one of the back streets of Yuma. After tying my boat, I hid my small load in some mesquite trees, then climbed the hill and pa.s.sed between two peculiar stone houses dark as dungeons.

They puzzled me from the outside, but when once past them, I was no longer in doubt. I had entered the open gateway leading to the courtyard of the Yuma penitentiary. No wonder the buildings looked like dungeons. This was a new experience for me, but somehow I had always imagined just how it would look. I was considering beating a retreat when a guard hailed me and asked me if I was not lost. With the a.s.sistance of the guard, I escaped from the pen and found my way to the streets of Yuma, just four days after leaving the Needles bridge.

CHAPTER XXVI

ACROSS THE MEXICO BORDER

"Mexico is a good place to keep away from just at present." This was the invariable answer to a few casual inquiries concerning what I would be likely to meet with in the way of difficulties, a possible companion for the voyage to the Gulf, and how one could get back when once there. I received little encouragement from the people of Yuma.

The cautions came not from the timid who see danger in every rumour, but from the old steamboat captains, the miners, and prospectors who knew the country and had interests in mineral claims across the border. These claims they had lost in many cases because they had failed for the last two years to keep up their a.s.sessment work. There were vague suggestions of being stood up against an adobe wall with a row of "yaller bellies" in front, or being thrown into damp dungeons and held for a ransom.

The steamboat men could give me little information about the river.

The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta. The widely spread water finally collected into an ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado.

As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new channel beyond a certain point called Volcanic Lake. Two or three parties had come back with stories of having attempted it, but found themselves in the middle of a cane-brake with insufficient water to float a boat. With a desire to be of real a.s.sistance to me, one old captain called a Yuma Indian into his office and asked him his opinion, suggesting that he might go along.

"Mebbe so get lost in the trees, mebbe so get shot by the Cocopah,"

the Indian replied as he shook his head.

The captain laughed at the last and said that the Yuma and Cocopah Indians were not the best of friends, and accused each other of all sorts of things which neither had committed. Some Mexicans and certain outlawed whites who kept close to the border for different reasons, and the possibilities of bogging in a cane-brake were the only uncertainties. In so many words he advised me against going.

Still I persevered. I had planned so long on completing my boating trip to the Gulf, that I disliked to abandon the idea altogether. I felt sure, with a flood on the Colorado, there would be some channel that a flat-bottomed boat could go through, when travelling with the current; but the return trip and the chances of being made a target for some hidden native who had lived on this unfriendly border and had as much reason for respecting some citizens of the United States as our own Indians had in the frontier days, caused me considerable concern. I knew it was customary everywhere to make much of the imaginary dangers, as we had found in our other journeys; but it is not difficult to discriminate between sound advice and the croakings which are based on lack of real information. I knew this was sound advice, and as usual I disliked to follow it. At last I got some encouragement. It came from a retired Wild West showman,--the real thing, one who knew the West from its early days. He laughed at the idea of danger and said I was not likely to find any one, even if I was anxious to do so, until I got to the La Bolso Ranch near the Gulf.

They would be glad to see me. He thought it was likely to prove uninteresting unless I intended to hunt wild hogs, but that was useless without dogs, and I would have trouble getting a gun past the custom officers. His advice was to talk with the Mexican consul, as he might know some one who could bring me back by horseback.

In the consul I found a young Spaniard, all affability, bows, and gestures; and without being conscious of it at first I too began making motions. He deplored my lack of knowledge of the Spanish language, laughed at any suggestion of trouble, as all trouble was in Eastern Sonora, he said, separated from the coast by two hundred miles of desert, and stated that the non-resident owner of the La Bolsa cattle ranch happened to be in the building at that moment. In a twinkling he had me before him and explained the situation. This gentleman, the owner of a 600,000-acre grant, and the fishing concession of the Gulf, stated that the ranch drove a team to Yuma once a week, that they would bring me back; in the interval I must consider myself the guest of the Rancho La Bolsa. The consul gave me a pa.s.sport, and so it was all arranged.

In spite of the consul's opinion, there were many whispered rumours of war, of silent automobiles loaded with firearms that stole out of town under cover of the night and returned in four days, and another of a river channel that could be followed and was followed, the start being made, not from Yuma, but from another border town farther west. A year before there had been an outbreak at this place of certain restless spirits,--some whites included,--and they went along the northern line of Mexico, sacking the ranches and terrorizing the people. The La Bolsa ranch was among those that suffered. The party contained some discharged vaqueros who were anxious to interview the ranch foreman, but fortunately for him he was absent. Then they turned south to Chihuahua and joined the army of Madero. War, to them, meant license to rob and kill. They were not insurrectos, but bandits, and this was the cla.s.s that was most feared.

Meanwhile I had not given up the idea of a possible companion. Before coming to Yuma I had entertained hopes of getting some one with a motor boat to take me down and back, but there were no motor boats, I found. The nearest approach to a power boat was an attempt that was being made to install the engine from a wrecked steam auto on a sort of flat-bottomed scow. I heard of this boat three or four times, and in each case the information was accompanied by a smile and some vague remarks about a "hybrid." I hunted up the owner,--the proprietor of a shooting gallery,--a man who had once had aspirations as a heavy-weight prize fighter, but had met with discouragement. So he had turned his activities to teaching the young idea how to shoot--especially the "Mexican idea" and those other border spirits who were itching for a sc.r.a.p.

The proprietor of the shooting gallery drove a thriving trade. Since he had abandoned his training he had taken on fat, and I found him to be a genial sort of giant who refused to concern himself with the serious side of life. Even a lacing he had received in San Francisco at the hands of a negro stevedore struck him as being humorous. He did not seem to have much more confidence in his "power boat" than the others, but said I might talk with the man who was putting it together, ending with the remark "Phillipps thinks he can make her run, and he has always talked of going to the Gulf."

On investigation I found Al Phillipps was anxious to go to the Gulf, and would go along if I would wait until he got his boat in shape.

This would take two days. Phillipps, as he told me himself, was a Jayhawker who had left the farm in Kansas and had gone to sea for two years. He was a cowboy, but had worked a year or two about mining engines. In Yuma he was a carpenter, but was anxious to leave and go prospecting along the Gulf. Phillipps and I were sure to have an interesting time. He spoke Spanish and did not fear any of the previously mentioned so-called dangers; he had heard of one party being carried out to sea when the tide rushed out of the river, but as we would have low tide he thought that, with caution, we could avoid that.

At last all was ready for the momentous trial. The river bank was lined with a crowd of men who seemed to have plenty of leisure. Some long-haired Yuma Indians, and red and green turbaned Papagos, gathered in a group off a little to one side. A number of darkies were fishing for bullheads, and boys of three colors besides the Mexicans and a lone Chinaman clambered over the trees and the boats along the sh.o.r.e.

It was a moment of suspense for Phillipps. His reputation as an engineer and a constructor of boats hung in the balance. He also had some original ideas about a rudder which had been incorporated in this boat. Now was his chance to test them out, and his hour of triumph if they worked.

The test was a rigid one. The boat was to be turned upstream against an eight-mile current with big sand-waves, beginning about sixty feet from the sh.o.r.e, running in the middle of the river. If the engine ran, and the stern paddle-wheel turned, his reputation was saved. If she was powerful enough to go against the current, it was a triumph and we would start for the Gulf at once.

On board were Phillipps, a volunteer, and myself. Before turning the boat loose, the engine was tried. It was a success. The paddle-wheel churned the water at a great rate, sending the boat upstream as far as the ropes would let her go. We would try a preliminary run in the quiet water close to the sh.o.r.e, before making the test in the swift current. The order was given to cast off, and for two men, the owner and another, to hold to the ropes and follow on the sh.o.r.e. The engine was started, the paddle-wheel revolved, slowly at first but gathering speed with each revolution. We began to move gently, then faster, so that the men on sh.o.r.e had difficulty in keeping even with us, impeded as they were with bushes and sloping banks. Flushed with success, the order was given to turn her loose, and we gathered in the ropes. Now we were drifting away from the sh.o.r.e and making some headway against the swift current. The crowd on sh.o.r.e was left behind.

But as we left the bank the river increased in speed and the boat gradually lost. Then she stood still, but began to turn slowly, broadside to the current. This was something we had not foreseen. With no headway the rudder was of no avail. There was no sweep-oar; we had even neglected to put an oar on the boat. With pieces of boards the stranger and I paddled, trying to hold her straight, but all the time, in spite of our efforts, she drifted away from the land and slowly turned. A big sand-wave struck her, she wheeled in her tracks and raced straight for a pier, down the stream.

About this time our engineer began having trouble with his engine. At first we feared it would not run, now it seemed it would not stop.

A great shout went up from the sh.o.r.e, and a bet was made that we would run to the Gulf in less than a day. A darky boy fell off a boat in the excitement, the Indians did a dance, men pounded each other and whooped for joy. Then a bolt came loose, and the engine ran away.

Driving-rod and belts were whirled "regardless," as the pa.s.senger afterwards said, about our heads.

Then the crash came. Our efforts to escape the pier were of no avail.