CHAPTER V.
PERIL IN THE GRAND CANYON
Excited and expectant travelers were many on the Santa Fe railroad, butRoger felt that he had never met a more enthusiastic group than thosewho dined at the long low mission-like hotel Fray Marcos at Williams,Ariz., waiting for the train to Grand Canyon. And of all these none hadbeen more a-tingle with anticipation than the boy, as the train, passingby the station of Hopi--the very name recording that strange tribe ofArizona Indians--ran through Apex and began to slow up for the laststop.
Throughout the past two or three hours of the trip, all the passengershad been speaking of the great sights that awaited them, and guidebooksand photograph collections without number had been scanned, bringinginterest to fever heat. But in spite of all this preparatory ardor,those who had visited the Grand Canyon before and those whose friendshad done so, bore testimony to the universal belief that nothing, noestimate of the wonders of that land, however extravagant, coulddiscount the reality.
It was a little after four o'clock on the afternoon of the last day inMay as the train drew into the station, and guides met the passengersready to conduct them direct to the brink of the Canyon that they mightgain their first sight of it. Roger's very toes were aching with thedesire to follow them, particularly as he was not on duty until thefollowing day, but still he felt that he was on government service andthat he ought to report for duty at the appointed place immediately onhis arrival. Then, the boy argued, should there be no one to meet him,his time would be his own until the following morning, and he couldenjoy the pleasures of sight-seeing without feeling that he had in anyway been neglectful of the strictest interpretation of his orders. Histrunk had been checked through, so Roger, refusing the solicitations ofthe guides, picked up the small hand-grip he had carried for thenecessities of the journey and set his face resolutely to the hotel.
Turning to view the country about him, Roger was as much disappointed asamazed to find how flat and uninteresting it seemed. Indeed, there wasnothing in the region to suggest that a canyon was anywhere in thevicinity. So far as he could see, on either side of the railroad trackup which he had come was a level treeless prairie, and in the directionwhither the tourists had gone, there was naught to be seen but this sameslowly rising plateau, which, a little further on, seemed to be boundedby a slight rise. The boy knew that the Canyon must be on the other sideof this eminence, but there was nothing to bespeak its presence, not asign to awake the consciousness that a few hundred yards away lay a viewof the greatest scenic wonder that any man had beheld, primitive anduntouched as since the days that antediluvian monsters roamed the plainswhereon he now was walking.
When he arrived at the hotel, Roger walked straight to the desk.
"Is Mr. Masseth here?" he asked the clerk.
The latter, a being largely characterized by shirt front, gestured theboy to a slightly built man, sitting in the rotunda of the hotel readinga newspaper with an intensity of concentration which Roger immediatelyconceived to be typical of the man. He turned instantly at the boy'sapproach, however.
"Mr. Masseth?" queried the lad.
The reader rose with a quick though courteous motion of assent.
"I was told to give this letter to you," the boy continued. "Iunderstand it contains my instructions to report to you. My name isRoger Doughty."
"I am extremely pleased," said the older man with a slight foreigntimbre in his voice, "to be able to welcome you. I felt assured, fromwhat Mr. Herold said when he wrote to me, that you would be here to-day,as he suggested that I should find you punctual. It is of the greatestservice never to lose a minute, unless indeed, it be taken for a rest."
"I don't want to lose minutes, I want to make the most of them, and Mr.Field told me that I should never be losing any time as long as I waswith you."
"In that case," replied the boy's new leader, with a quick smile, "whatwould you like to do now? You have never seen the Grand Canyon before?"
"Never!"
"And you are anxious to do so, of course?"
"You bet!" answered Roger. Then, with a laugh, "I pretty nearly mutiniedon my first day; I came near going over with the tourists instead ofcoming here to report."
"I am quite glad that you did not," said the topographer, "for I shouldlike to be with you the first time you see the Canyon in order to beable to tell you what it all means and how it came about. You wouldprobably try to guess at the reason of things and you would guess wrong,and a false first impression is a bad thing, because it is so hard totake out afterward."
"I'd very much rather find out right at first," answered the boy.
"Very well, then, suppose we walk to a near-by point, where an unusuallygood view of the Canyon can be observed."
Taking up his hat, as he spoke, he waited while the boy arranged for hisgrip to be taken to his room, and then without further parley startedtoward the brink of the chasm with quick, nervous strides which taxedRoger's walking powers to the utmost. They walked on to the roundedhill, Roger so full of excitement that he could hardly answer hiscompanion's questions about his former work on the Survey, and just asthey were about to cross the summit of the slope, Masseth touched him onthe arm, holding him back.
"Wait just a moment," he said. "Look back over the country and tell mewhat you see."
Roger turned. "I don't see very much," he said. "I think it's prettyflat except for a range of hills to the east, away off, and that to thesouth the ground seems to be falling away."
"Is the fall long?"
"I hadn't thought of that," said the boy, "but I suppose we must bequite high up, for the road has been on a gradual incline for miles andmiles."
Masseth took a few steps onward.
"You noticed," he said, "how gradual that slope was. Now," pausing asthey crossed the ridge, "this is not so gradual." He smiled at the boy'sspeechless wonderment.
Roger found himself standing not three yards away from a drop of 6,800feet, the first couple of thousand sheer almost immediately below him.So near that he could have leaped to it, rose a fantastic pinnacle,elaborately carved, springing from a base 1,200 feet below. Beyond this,seamed and jagged, thrown across this cloven chasm as though in defianceof any natural supposing, flung a blood-red escarpment, taking thebreath away by the very audacity of its reckless scenic emphasis.Further, again, in unsoftened splashes and belts of naked color, mesaand plateau, peak and crag, shouldering butte and towering barrier,through a vista of miles seeming to stretch to the very world's end,impelled a breathless awe.
And, in Titanic mockery of pygmy human work, the glowing rocks appearedgrotesquely, yet powerfully scornful of the greatest buildings ofmankind. Minaret and spire, minster and dome, facade and campanile,stood guard over the riven precipices, and not to be outdone by man,nature had there erected temple and coliseum, pyramid and vastcathedral, castle and thrice-walled fastness, until it seemed to the boythat there was thrown before his eyes a hysterical riot of every dreamand nightmare of architecture that the world had ever conceived.
"But--but, I never thought it was anything like this!" exclaimed Roger.
The older man repressed a smile at the triteness of the speech, which isthat usually educed from every new beholder of the scene.
"What do you think of it?" he said.
"It doesn't seem real," answered the boy. "It's like the places you seein your dreams that you know can't be so, and what's more, it's likeone of those places all set on fire with flames of different colors."
GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO.
Showing the nature of the apparently impossible obstacles found intraversing it.
_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]
The topographer nodded.
"But what you will find still more strange," he said, "is that it isnever twice the same. If you move a few yards away"--he suited theaction to the word--"it looks quite different, and even if you staystill, under the changing light new shapes appear."
"That's right," affirmed the boy. "From where we stood be
fore, I couldsee a huge fortress, only it was a vivid purple, and now it's gone. AndI suppose those really aren't richly carved churches over there,"pointing with his finger, "but a fellow would bet that they were."
"Churches without any congregations, and whose only preacher is thethunder, but they do look like temples and are so named. But truly theyhave been carved, though not by human hands."
"By what, then?" asked the boy.
"By wind and water," was the reply, "which have made and unmade many athousand square mile of the earth's surface. If you will notice," hewent on, "jagged and pointed as those peaks are, from this side clearacross to the other, not one of them rises above the level on which youare standing or rather, above the level of the opposite side of theCanyon, which is a little higher, the slope being continued across. So,you see, you must not think of these like mountains as being built up,but of gorges as being cut down."
"And has the river cut it all down?"
"The river started it, and then of course every little stream helps, andindeed, every rain adds another fissure to the carving."
"But what makes such curious shapes?" asked the boy, still considerablypuzzled.
"The relative hardness of the different kinds of rock," was the reply."Not to seem too technical, the top stratum, that is to say the rockimmediately under the soil of this plateau, while quite hard, is verythin, and underneath it are various other layers of rock, some fairlyhard and others very soft. The Colorado River has a very swift current,and once it had cut through the hard rock on the top it quickly ate itsway downward through the soft limestones and sandstones below. But somestrata were quite hard and these, resisting the water, formed theterraces which you see on every hand."
"But I still don't understand," said the boy, "what it is that givesthem such curious shapes. I can see how a hard rock would make aterrace, but why aren't the lines all regular?"
"Just because it has been done by water. Sandstone, you know, is made ofsand, pressed, and sand is all sorts of rocks ground down fine. So everyhandful of sand may contain particles of a dozen different kinds ofrock, and if there was any difference in the hardness of the rock ofwhich the sandstone was made, or any difference in the pressure while itwas being made, each difference would show up by its greater or lessresistance to the action of wind and water. So, you see this bit is hardand cuts slowly, that bit soft, and cuts rapidly, giving a carvedeffect."
"But if it all follows a regular rule, why does it look so unnatural?"
"That is easy," replied his informant. "The strata are regular--that iswhat makes the masses look like buildings done by hand, there is a senseof proportion, but they look unnatural because the ground plan iscapricious, the water having found its way to the bottom of its thousandcanyons by the irregular and complicated way of least resistance."
"And the colors seem so glaring and so strange!"
"I will explain those to you after dinner," said the topographer, "and,by the way, it is nearly time we returned to the hotel or we shall belate. I can show you how the various reds are due to iron in therock--you remember how a rusty nail stains everything red?--and otheriron compounds give the green, while the blues of the slates and thedark belts of hornblende all play their part."
Masseth was as good as his word and all through the time spent in thedining-room he interested the boy in the country by his vividdescriptions of how all these rocks had first been made, then reduced tosand and built up again, and how the Colorado River was fast tearingthem down and carrying them away to be built up somewhere else in someother way.
"Then geology isn't all over!" exclaimed Roger in surprise. "I alwaysthought of it just as a sort of history of things that happened a greatwhile ago."
"Geology is happening right along," said Masseth, "and that's why it isso necessary to do this work and find out both what has been and whatis going to be, even though it is both difficult and arduous."
AN AWKWARD COUNTRY TO WORK IN.
The Terraces cut in the Western territory. Note buggy on trail at baseof cliff.
_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]
"But of all the work in the Survey," suggested Roger, thinking of theapparent inaccessibility of the Canyon as he had seen it, "I shouldthink this Grand Canyon work the most difficult and dangerous of all."
The older man shook his head.
"It is not dangerous," he said, "unless carelessness is shown, becausethe most lofty buttes, simply being cut down from the level plateau,have their crests just that height, so that they can be fairly wellmapped by a determination of their bases. But, though you can't see itfrom the top here, those bases are fearfully irregular and a cliff fortyfeet high may take miles to go round. You have noticed that there areplenty of terraces, so that in many places you can walk up or down theCanyon as on a made road, but that would help you not a whit in gettingacross."
"Well, it is difficult, anyway," said the boy.
"Extremely so. The intense color, the glowing rays of the sun seldomshielded by any clouds, the lack of vegetation and the absence oflandmarks all help to confuse the idea of distance, so that you cannottrust to your eyes to map a point until you have been there."
"And how do you get there?" queried the boy in wonderment.
"Climbing. There is an Indian trail on this side that helps a little,and there are three roads down to the river on this side and one on thenorth. This one through trail, called the Cameron or Tourist trail, hasbeen partly rendered passable, so that by herculean effort and withtrusted and well-trained animals it is possible to cross. Usually,however, the trail is left in loneliness, for there is absolutely notraffic between Utah and Arizona. Except for a little corner in each,these States are more widely separated than if an ocean rolled betweenthem."
"And how about these corners?"
"Well, Utah can get to hers by taking a little trouble, but thenorthwest corner of Arizona is No Man's Land, so far as any jurisdictiongoes."
"But you say animals can be made to tackle those trails. I should havethought that kind of work would kill any animal that tried it."
"It's pretty hard to kill a burro," answered Masseth, "and I've neverlost one. Indeed, in all the Survey work I've done in the Grand Canyon,I've only had one accident, and that was a case absolutely unavoidable.I lost one of my favorite horses that time."
"How did it happen, Mr. Masseth?" asked Roger.
"It was on the north side of the Canyon," began the topographer, "and Iwas working on an outlying butte with my assistant. We had made quite anumber of bench marks and I was working out the contours--those are thelines on a map which show the height or elevation of any point--while myassistant was sitting beside me, making out some of the necessarycalculations. We were working out from a little side camp, the two ofus, the rest of the party being at headquarters, several miles away. Iwas drawing in at full speed, because I wanted to change from that sidestation that evening, and for a couple of hours I suppose we had notexchanged a word, except with relation to figures.
"Before coming out on that sun-baked exposed butte, I had tied theanimals--a pack-mule, my riding mare, and the assistant's horse--to thebranch of a tree. Suddenly, as it afterwards appeared, the other fellowheard a sound as of a fall and went to see what it was. He was gone solong that I noticed his absence. When he returned I waited for him tovolunteer an explanation but apparently he did not want to disturb me,so I said, questioningly:
"'Well?'"
"'Only two of them there now,'" he replied. 'Bella's gone over the edge.Neck's broken, so there's no use doing anything.'
"Now Uncle Sam, you know, is always willing to stand for accidents thatcan't be helped, but he's got to know all about it, and while I realizedthat it would really matter little in the long run, I was sure that thedepartment would feel better satisfied if the manner of the accidentwere set forth. So I put away my pencil, folded up the plane table, andwent to investigate. It was as puzzling a thing to decide as I ever saw.The tree was at least twenty yards from the brink of the pre
cipice,although the ground sloped fairly steeply to the edge.
"When I arrived there I found the other two animals tied to the branch,as I had left them, and apparently undisturbed. The ground, however,between the tree and the edge of the chasm, was torn up with hoof marksand the struggles of an animal that evidently had fallen to the ground,and the spoor from the tree to the Canyon's edge was easily traced. Ofthe animal, I could at first find no evidence, but my assistant touchedme on the arm.
"'Here, Mr. Masseth,' he said, 'you can see Bella from here.'
"Sure enough, on rounding the corner of a pinnacle which stood out alittle distance from the edge, the body of the mare could be seen aboutone hundred and seventy-five feet down, lying on a sharply pitching bankof talus--that is, debris of rock and dust, fallen from the overhangingcliff above. It was still a wonder to me how the mare fell, and as shehad been wearing a brand-new halter, this in a country where it iseasier to get beast than harness, I told my assistant that I was goingdown to secure the halter and also to find out, if I could, what hadbeen the cause of the accident.
"I think that was about as nasty a piece of climbing as I ever had. Itwould never come about in the regular course of business, you see,because we don't work that way, but I was going down to get that brute,no matter what labor it cost. At last I managed to make my way down tothe point where she was lying. There, after studying the position inwhich she must have fallen, I gained some idea of the manner in which ithad come about. Bella was from the ranches, where, you know, an animalis not muscle-bound like your eastern horses, and in trying to scratchher head--where possibly a fly had settled--with her off fore-leg, thecalk of her shoe must have caught in the neck-strap of the halter, andof course, she could not get it out.
"The poor beast probably stood as long as she could on three legs, butthe posture must have been cramped and painful after a few moments andshe fell heavily, breaking the rope of the halter as she did so. Then,while lying on the ground, floundering about in an effort to free herfoot from the thraldom of the halter-strap, she must have slipped nearerand nearer to the edge and then suddenly gone over, with her hind-footstill fast in the strap.
"Since I had got so far, though I did not much relish doing it, Idetermined to take off the halter, and at least save that out of thewreck. But you can readily see that the halter had been drawn fearfullytight, and I could not get slack enough to unfasten the buckle. At lastI gave a hearty wrench, and was just about to be able to slip the prongof the buckle through the hole, when the insecure talus on which I wasstanding, and on which the animal had been resting, began to slide.Fortunately I am fairly quick on my feet, and in two or three springs Ireached a little outjutting terrace. But I had scarcely reached thatpoint of safety when poor Bella went over the edge another seventy-fivefeet into the chasm.
"That made me mad. I had come down a very nasty piece of climbing to getthat halter, and I was bound to secure that bit of leather if I had toscramble down the gorge to the very bed of the river itself. So, as soonas I could find a way to start down, I went on and reached the mare,this time resting on a wide ledge where I could disentangle the halterwith but very little trouble.
"I had gained the object of my quest, I had found out the cause of theaccident to the horse, and I had recovered the halter, but in theachievement of these purposes I found myself two hundred feet down thegorge and I knew that it would be a great deal harder to get up thatdistance than it had been to get down, and even the latter had been noeasy matter. Of course, my assistant was up above, and had been watchingthe proceedings, all the while, so that I knew he would get at me fromthe top in the course of time.
"I was anxious, however, to get back the way that I had come withouttaking a long trip to one of the side canyons, and after losing sometime, and also some skin from knees and elbows and other parts of mybody, I got back to the place where the horse had first lain. Myassistant dropped me a rope--there is always a long rope carried by eachparty--and I climbed up that rope."
"Swarmed up a rope a hundred and seventy-five feet high!" ejaculatedRoger, then, with a whistle, he added, "that's an awful climb."
"It was not a straight hand over hand climb, my boy," answered Massethquietly. "You must remember that all those walls are in terraces andevery other line of strata would give a ledge. Of course, in some partsthey were overhanging and that made it all the harder, but there wereplenty of places to rest on the way up and in due course I reached thetop. That was the first misadventure, and I hope it will be the last inany of my camps in Grand Canyon work."
"And what part of the work are you doing now, Mr. Masseth?" queried theboy.
"I was just waiting for you to complete the party," was the reply. "Weare going to tackle the Tourist's trail, that is the one I was tellingyou about, and will go up the other side. Then, from the north side, Iwill pick out a number of points which I want you--with other members ofthe party--to occupy. You will then do some work under my assistant,while I cross back to this side, and on an appointed day we will strikea level across the nine-miles gap."
"Then we will be working together though miles apart?" asked the boy insurprise.
"Yes, and months apart, too."
"But how in the world can you do that?" was the amazed response. "Do youcarry a wireless telegraph outfit in your vest pocket, Mr. Masseth? Isthere anything the Survey can't do?"
"You seem to think," responded the chief with a smile, "that the race ofwizards has been reborn and christened the Geological Survey, as avisiting diplomat once said of us."
"Well, pretty nearly," answered the boy.
"We're not quite that," admitted the other, "but," with a smile ofmystification, "I do carry a little device by which I can make use of asystem of wireless telegraphy which was in existence thousands of yearsago."
"And can I see it?"
"Certainly," replied the topographer, and drawing his hand from hispocket, he showed it open to the boy.
"That's just a looking-glass," cried Roger in disappointment, havingexpected to see some delicate and ingenious piece of intricatemachinery.
"Just a piece of looking-glass," assented his chief. "What then?"
"But how do you work it? What can you do with that?"
"That, my boy," answered the older man, "is one of the very many thingsyou will learn while you are in and about the Grand Canyon."
"HOW IN THE WORLD AM I GOING TO GET UP THERE?"
A query for the topographer, which must be answered; a sample of roughcountry work.
_Photograph by U.S.G.S._]