100 Years Ago: May 1924

[George Thomas Wilson]

100 Years Ago: May 1924

 

This is the 112^th entry in my series of abridgements of 100-year-old National Geographic Magazines.

 

 

The first article in this month’s issue is entitled “Surveying the Grand Canyon of the Colorado” and was written by Lewis R Freeman.  It has the internal subtitle: “An Account of the 1923 Boating Expedition of the United States Geological Survey.”  The article contains sixty-two black-and-white photographs, of which fourteen are full-page in size.  It also contains a sketch map of the Grand Canyon on page 474.

Sketch Map courtesy of Philip Riviere

Seven of our United States were vitally interested in the great Colorado River which, with its major tributaries, had a length of more than 1,700 miles and a phenomenal fall of 10,000 feet between its headwaters in the Rocky Mountains and its mouth in the Gulf of California.  The control of flood waters of that mighty river and the utilization of the power which, in 1924, went to waste in its drop of nearly two vertical miles, as well as the vast irrigation projects which had been and were being developed along its course, directly concerned the citizens of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, California, and our neighboring Republic of Mexico.  The most spectacular section of the Colorado River Basin was the Grand Canyon, with its mile-high, multihued walls – one of the great natural wonders.  More the half a century prior [to 1923], John Powell made two daring and historic voyages though that Grand Canyon and later published some remarkably interesting narratives of his explorations.  Those works have held up for fifty years, only verified, little modified by those who followed.  But with the vast projects for irrigation, flood control, and power development, more specific information then that obtained in 1872 had become essential.  Therefore, in the summer of 1923, the U. S. Geological Survey, a government bureau which in large measure owed its establishment to Powell, organized an expedition to make a new map of the Grand Canyon – the last stretch of the great river which remained to be accurately surveyed.  Claude H. Birdseye, Chief Topographic Engineer of the Geological Survey, was named to organize and head the expedition.  Along with Birdseye, the leader, the party included R. W. Burchard, the topographic engineer; R. C. Moore, the geologist; E. C. Larue, the hydraulic engineer; H. E. Blake, Leigh Lint, Emery Kolb (also photographer), and Lewis R. Freeman (the author), the four boatmen; Frank Dodge, the rodman; and a cook.

Three of their boats were already at Lees Ferry; the fourth awaited them at Flagstaff.  A cradle of timber was built on a truck for the boat’s trip across desert and mountain roads.  A second truck and two autos carried the remainder of the party and outfit.  Leaving Flagstaff at noon on the 18^th, they camped that night at the Cedar Ridge trading post of the Navajo Indian Reservation.  Pushing on early the following morning, they were delayed by the necessity of repairing washouts from a recent cloudburst in the road along Tanners Wash.  The gorge of Marble Canyon was hard to see even though their winding desert track was, at times, less than a mile away from the great chasm.  At the old Mormon dugway they had to choose between unloading the boat and taking it down the river or running it through on the truck.  They chose the latter.  Despite the fear of the driver, it rode through with plenty to spare.  Camp was made at the boathouse of the Southern California Edison Company, on the right bank of the river, just below the cable ferry. At 110 degrees F. and high humidity, it was trying after the exhilarating mountain air of Flagstaff.  The end-of-day plunge in the river that evening after work was over became an established feature for several weeks.  The water was red with mud; but it was a clean sort of mud and came off freely under vigorous toweling.  Until they were exposed to the filth pouring out of the Little Colorado, their evening, morning, and interim dips were refreshing.  The mouth of the Paria, from where their start was made, was one of the most historic points on the Colorado.  Fray Escalante camped there in 1776; James Pattie, the trapper, passed there in the middle [eighteen]-twenties; and Powell camped at the Paria in early August 1869, and pushed off into the depths of Marble Canyon the following morning on the final stage of his pioneering voyage.  He met neither Indians nor whites in the valley at that time, but three years later, his second expedition found the Mormon renegade, John D. Lee, farming a patch of land above the ford which still bore his name.

The Brown-Stanton party, surveying for a railroad through the Grand Canyon, halted and refitted at Lees Ferry in July 1889.  Three of the eight men of the reduced party were lost within a few days of putting into Marble Canyon, forcing a halt to the expedition.  Stanton’s reorganized party had Christmas dinner at the Ferry six months later, before resuming the uncompleted survey.  He was back a few days later for help in bringing out his photographer, who had broken his leg in a 20-foot fall.  Little remained in 1923.  Lee’s first log cabin and his four-way lookout on a point above the Paria were still there, but no traces of those early explorers were to be found, except for the name HISLOP, carved in the red sandstone of the house now occupied by the Government hydrographer.  That could only have been John Hislop, Stanton’s right-hand man on both voyages.  The four boats used on their expedition were all flat-bottomed, decked-over, one-man type.  The original design was built by Nathan Galloway.  On the sound theory it was better to avoid a rock in a light boat that hit it with a heavy one, the design sacrificed strength for handiness.  On Julius F. Stone’s 1909 photographic trip through the Canyon, he and Galloway designed the ideal boat; the present type of Grand Canyon boat was the result.  Both Stone and Galloway brought both of their boats through all the way without upset and with but a single little collision.  When the Kolb Brothers were planning their photographic expedition though the Colorado canyons in 1911, Mr. Stone furnished them with blueprints of the design of the boat.  [See: “Experiences in the Grand Canyon,” August 1914, National Geographic Magazine.]  Without decreasing handiness, they strengthened the boat.  Ten years later, when the Geological Survey and the Southern California Edison Company planned a joint expedition through Cataract Canyon, boats of larger dimensions were needed to carry the heavy outfits.  Those weighed 800 pounds, with double the cargo capacity of the early prototype.

The fleet assembled for their Grand Canyon expedition consisted of three of those 18-foot boats and a lighter one having a length of 16 feet.  Even though those boat were three times a heavy as the original design, they were still powered by one man.  Thirteen days were spent at Lee’s Ferry getting ready for the voyage.  Re-coppered, re-caulked, and repainted, the used boats appeared tight and serviceable.  A folding canvas boat, to be used in the event of an emergency promised usefulness – as long as it lasted.  Satisfactory waterproof bags and boxes had been made, only after months of trails and experiments.  The best protection for bedding, duffel, and provisions proved to be an inner sack of rubber, covered with an outer one of waterproof canvas with a double tie.  An attempt to make watertight instrument and camera boxes from galvanized iron was a failure; the metal bent under pressure.  Then a serviceable wooden box, the cover of which was held down upon a rubber gasket by brass catches.  Of the several types of life preservers provided, the old cork type was the only one giving any great amount of buoyancy.  Real freedom for rowing action in a life preserver had to be worked out.  They had to be worn in every bad rapid; that was the leader’s order.  A radio set had been included in the outfit for two reasons: on the chance it might bring them warning in the event of a flood descending from above, and the possible source of entertainment.   An article published in a radio magazine stated that it was impossible to receive radio signals in any deep, steep-walled depression.  Since they were headed into the deepest gorge of its kind, the expedition was a good test of that theory.  Despite interference from thunderstorms, their set worked throughout the trip.  KHJ, Los Angeles always came in most clearly.  They decided to name their boats after the Colorado River canyons – Grand, Glen, and Marble for the 18-footers, Boulder for the 16-footer, and Mojave for the canvas boat.

Blake was the boatman on the Glen and carried the cooking outfit and the cook as passenger.  The Boulder was the survey boat and was handled by Lint with Birdseye and Burchard as passengers.  The author commanded the Grand with Moore and La Rue as passengers.  Besides geology and hydraulics, they also took photographs and motion-pictures.  Kolb, with the Marble, had no passengers at the outset.  Dodge was carrying the rod on the Mojave.  The ability to secure necessities of every description in a comparatively short time was an outstanding advantage that this expedition had over those of earlier Colorado Canyon navigators.  As the time for starting approached, it became evident that they must expect unseasonably high water.  The flow rate of the river was 25,000 second-feet – well above the normal for that time of year.  Just how that condition would affect navigation was problematical.  Low water was considered safest.  With their heavy boats, maybe higher water would be better.  That, like a number of other things, remained to be seen.  They had a manual of navigational information compiled from all reports and accounts of previous voyages.  That manual gave milage, estimated falls of rapids, and ways to surmount difficulties.  After packing and shaking down outfit most of July 31, they were ready for an early start on the morning of August 1.  The hulls of their small crafts admitted an astonishing amount of the mountainous piles of supplies on the bank.  With their full loads, all four boats were well down in the water.  It was a morning of bright sunshine on the river, but above the Vermilion Cliffs, piles of cumuli were gathering for the afternoon thunderstorm.  To the south were the Echo Cliffs and behind them was the mouth of Glen Canyon.  Ahead, the portal of Marble Canyon, was the beginning of a black gash cleaving the plateau.

As they dropped down past the old stone house of the hydrographer’s station, Cockroft paddled out in his canoe and delivered a parting gift from his wife in the form of a cake.  Just below the dugway, where the first outcrop of limestone marked the beginning of Marble Canyon, Birdseye and Burchard landed and began surveying, tying the river line into the completed survey from Glen Canyon.  The rate at which Marble Canyon burrowed its way into the bowels of the earth never failed to astonish the traveler entering it for the first time.  The walls climbed due both to the rapid rise of the plateau and the fall of the river; mostly due to the former.  While the river dropped about 10 feet per mile, the plateau rose an average of 100 feet per mile.  In that part of Marble Canyon, nine-tens of the rise were due to rise of the plateau, while one one-tenth was due to the descent of the river.  At three miles from the Paria, they stopped to look over the first riffle of any size in the canyon.  They easily avoided the rocks on the right.  The boats bobbed through at a lively rate, but without taking much water.  They tied up for lunch at a bridge site a mile farther down the river – a narrow section with abrupt walls 500 feet in height on either side.  A bridge was planned to connect the two sections of Arizona divided by the Grand Canyon.  It would be approximately 600 feet long and 500 feet above the water.  After running another small riffle, a half-mile row in quiet water brought them in sound of a heavy roar, which they knew was that of Badger Creek Rapid.  They came in sight of it 20 minutes later.  Pulling in cautiously, they landed in a quiet eddy behind three large rocks.  They started down to look over the rapids when a gathering thunderstorm broke in a heavy squall and forced them to seek shelter under projecting rocks.  A deep undercut cave in the sandstone or limestone was the best shelter – provided it had no back entrance.

Nine-tenths of the rapids in the Colorado River canyons were formed by dams of boulders washed out of side creeks.  At Badger Creek Rapid, the dam thrown out from the canyon of that name had been reinforced by the discharge of a small, unnamed canyon immediately opposite.  The rapid appeared decidedly rough as they looked it over.  From the right bank it was difficult to fix a safe course through the rapid, but from an elevated position on the left bank one was mapped out.  In preparation for the first run, all cameras, instruments, and radio set were carried to the foot of the rapid.  The remainer of the load was trimmed and the hatches screwed down.  Nothing was left loose in the cockpits save the boatmen.  The canvas boat was carried to the bottom of the rapid and launched, in case of need.  Kolb in the Marble went first.  He missed the big boulder on the left but hit a submerged rock.  Swung half sidewise, it drifted over a round wave and dropped, almost disappearing in a cloud of spray.  The boat reappeared an instant later, partly filled but still riding buoyantly.  Too far to the left to make the foot of the rapid on the right where the cameras and instruments were portaged, Kolb landed on the opposite bank.  Lint followed in the Boulder, hit the V just right and pulled away from the rocks with plenty to spare.  The author, in the Grand, went next.  He took the boat a few feet too far to the left and was carried upstream in an eddy.  He swung around the middle of the current and dropped down to the brink of the fall again.  Once the V began to open, he sat down and pulled hard against the current setting toward the jutting rocks and slid over the top.  He let the boat swing over the next comber but had no trouble bringing its head upstream again and pull well clear of the bad hole.  Blake, in the Glen, running last was drawn somewhat right of the V, dropping down into a broken wave.  It was in rough water for the next hundred feet, and then came out under good condition.

When Kolb examine his boat, he found that the hold was several inches deep in water.  Investigation showed that the bottom had been punctured, probable by the rock hit at the head of the rapid.  Powell had estimated the fall of Badger Creek Rapid to be 18 feet, while Kolb put it at 20.  Burchard, of this party, found it to be 13.  Theirs was the first voyage on which the fall of the rapids of the lower Colorado canyons was measured with precise instruments.  From beginning to end, the earlier estimates were found to be far too liberal.  The walls of the canyon, which were 730 feet above the river at Badger Creek, increased steadily in height as they proceeded, with an ever-broader streak of Hermit shale showing as they penetrated deeper into the gorge.  About two miles below Badger Creek they came to a striking monument of dolomite in the middle of the river.  It must have fallen from one of the higher formations.  Since it was not mentioned by previous expeditions, and since it showed little weathering, it was probably of very recent origin.  Upon reaching a long, straight stretch of canyon running east and west, they landed to photograph a great rectangular cliff which towered against the skyline.  A heavy roar became audible as they neared the bend, indicating the presence of a major rapid below Soap Creek – a mile or two nearer to Badger Creek than was shown on existing maps.  An extensive fan of white boulders identified a rapid with one of the worst reputations on the Colorado.  Landing, they picked a camp on the right bank, 100 yards above the break of the fall.  There was ample room to portage on the boulders to the right of Soap Creek Rapid.  At first sight, while plainly of a greater and more violent fall than that of Badger Creek, Soap Creek looked no more dangerous to run.  They were preparing for the run when Kolb returned from the other side and declared it too risky.  There was some disappointment, but the portage was a short one.

The portage method was the same for each boat.  The Glen went first.  It was taken down 200 feet under oars, lined another 100 feet farther, and then unloaded.  It was then lined empty 50 more feet to the head of the portage.  That was across large boulders, over and between which logs were laid to prevent the boats from damage when they slide down.  It was heavy work, but not too punishing with many men available.  The boat was then lowered over a five-foot waterfall to a quiet pool at the end of the portage.  There it was launched and reloaded.  It was then backed out between two large rocks, and the rapid was entered on the right, just below the two big waves which had been avoided.  The next 200 yards comprised a rough but not dangerous run.  Then the boat pulled into an eddy to a beach along the right bank.  The Grand was brought down while dinner was cooking, and the two remaining boats in the afternoon, after which there was still time for a cooling swim and a rest before supper.  The radio still came in strong at Soap Creek, where the walls were 1,000 feet high, conclusively disproving the theory that that deep of a canyon would block all radio waves.  Station KHJ had notified them that it was planning a special broadcast for them on the evening of August 2.  That was the night of their arrival at Soap Creek.  The set their radio up, and the 9:00 p. m. message came in strong.  Baseball scores had come in and the daily grist of the news was halfway through, when there was a pause.  When the announcer resumed it was to state, with deep emotion, that President Harding had died in San Francisco.  The news was repeated a dozen times during the next hour, once directly addressed to “the engineers braving the rapids of the Colorado.”  They had received their special message, but not the one they had expected.  Birdseye announced that the expedition would take one day of rest out of respect to the memory of the President.

The fall of Soap Creek Rapid was found to be 18 feet.  Earlier explorers had put it at 25, with waves 12 feet high.  The latter estimate was conservative, especially regarding the two big waves at the head of the first steep drop.  The waves of rapids were very difficult to measure.  Estimates of the heights varied, even among the party.  For several miles below Soap Creek, the water could be run without danger.  At noon on the 4^th, they halted for lunch on a shelf 100 yards above the head of a long and rough rapid.  Knowing the rapid had been run several times without trouble, there was little to give them pause.  The Grand was the last boat to start. La Rue slipped on a smooth rock and almost let them slip into the swift current without him.  The canyon displayed points of rare beauty, with the Supai sandstone rising higher and higher from the water, and the Kaibab limestone and Hermit shale beginning to form a secondary wall behind.  Many caves had been formed by the undercutting of cliffs.  Pulling into one of those, they lounged for half an hour in the cool depths.  They ran a rough major rapid just before going into camp for the night, and a second immediately after lunch the following day.  At that point, the author had his first experience with the solidity of the bottom of the Colorado River.  A heavy sandstorm was blowing out of the side canyon to the right as he drifted down to the head of the rapid.  Fighting against it, he pulled to far to the right and dropped upon a mess of boulders.  The stern bumped solidly against a rock, allowing the boat to swing completely around.  The boat drove through the next couple of waves bow on, and then slid away from the heavy rollers under good condition.  He beached the boat on the left bank and found the boat had suffered no damage.  The Grand had the driest run through of any of the boats, despite hitting the rocks.

Camp was pitched on a steep sloping terrace of rocks and sand at the head of a big back-sweeping eddy.  Radio came in clear as ever, even though the Kaibab now towered more than 2,000 feet above them.  There was a Sunday evening concert.  August 6 was one of the liveliest days of the voyage.  Three or four major rapids and several riffles were run, in nearly every instance the head of one being in sight from the foot of the preceding.  The total distance made was three miles, with a descent of 50 feet.  That stretch had probably the heaviest average fall in Marble Canyon.  The second rapid was a straight run down the middle, with no chance of hitting rocks – only big water.  The author took the Grand through with the intent of seeing how his craft handle heavy waves.  At the first big wave, they only took on a bucket-full; at the second wave, enough rolled in to fill the cockpit up to the seat.  A third wave completed the job and left the gunwales awash.  The boat rolled much worse than normally; dipping a gunwale under at every roll; but she was still responsive to the oars, and he had no trouble bringing her to the left bank well above the head of the next rapid.  After ten minutes of bailing, the cockpit was dry again.  The other three boats made the run through the rapid without incident, but Dodge, with the canvas boat, capsized in the first wave.  He was able to right it, and the Mojave in commission again.  Drifting past an undercut cliff, the author noticed for the first time the water-polished limestone which had led Powell to apply the name Marble Canyon to the gorge, which was properly the upper end of the Grand Canyon.  This was not real marble, according to Moore, but it was very hard, and took a beautiful finish.  They ran on to a camp at the head of an abrupt and noisy rapid, where the seepage from the steep canyon formed several clear springs, while a rising series of terraces gave good sleeping room.

Climbing over the rocks to look at the rapid, they found a trapper’s complete outfit half buried in sand of the floor of a large cave.  As the cave was below high watermark, it appeared probable that all the lighter objects had been carried away.  They could only conjecture as to the fate of the trapper or trappers.  As there was no record of any such party reaching or passing Bright Angel, it seemed certain that the owner or owners were lost in the rapids below.  They prepared to run what they decided to call “Cave Rapid” the following morning.  Burchard, Dodge, and Kolb were starting to line the canvas boat down the right side of the rapid, to have available below in case of emergency, when the little craft carried over a rock, filled, and was smashed into a shapeless mass.  Dodge and the rod henceforth rode on the Glen, while the cook was shifted to the Marble.  They had a pleasant camp that night on a beach between two winding rapids, with a seep from a canyon supplying good drinking water again.  Running several easy riffles, they came, just before noon the next day, to one which disappeared a bend and was divided by the first midstream boulder bar they had encountered.  A brilliant patch of verdure laid against the side of an amphitheater at the right of the bend.  A hundred feet further down the side, another patch of green revealed the place as Vasey’s Paradise.  The cliffs below Vasey’s Paradise were unrivaled in the whole Grand Canyon series, save possibly by those in the vicinity of the mouth of Havasu Creek.  Delicately rather than brilliantly colored, their subdued pinks, yellows, and browns threw back to depths of the gorge a mellow blend of lilac, pearl, and amethyst.  Quiet, smooth-flowing water gave them an opportunity to revel in the veritable symphony of colors undisturbed by navigational worries.  They found cold springs spouting out of the rock at several points.  Grass and flowers were lush and green within spattering range of the flying drops.

Farther along that same stretch of canyon, they came to a fantastic jumble of windows, gabbles, turrets, and buttresses for which the name of “Goblins Castle” would have been highly appropriate.  Toward the end of the afternoon, they landed to explore a large undercut cave beneath the left-hand cliff.  The roof rose steadily until it overhung the middle of the river at the height of 200 feet.  The floor was a succession of terraces of hard, smooth sand, rising like the seats of a stadium until the highest touched the vault of the limestone roof.  On the 9^th they passed the first mesquite trees and sighted the first deer.  They tried taking movies of the deer, but they were too shifty to make closeups possible.  A huge boulder planted squarely in the middle of a short but savage rapid halted them early in the afternoon at a bend identified as Stanton’s “Point Hausbrough.”  As the obstruction ahead needed careful study and as the 10^th had been set aside for observance of the memory of the late President, a two-day camp was set up on the sandbar opposite the historic landmark.  A series of wind squalls swept the river just after they landed.  Thunderheads began to gather in the wake of the squalls and the main storm broke just as supper was over.  After the wind the rain set in, first in violent squalls, then in a steady downpour.  Violent storms of that character continued to sweep their camps at frequent intervals until about the middle of September, when the cooler weather of early fall put an end to the seasonal disturbances.  Although the grave of Peter Hausbrough must have been behind their camp, careful search failed to reveal it, because the talus at the foot of the cliff had been built up several feet in the third of a century since the inscription was carved.  The rock-obstructed rapid below that camp was evidently of recent formation.  No mention of it was made in in the records of any of the earlier voyages.

Above the rock was a back-thrown wave of water more than 10 feet in height; below it a whirlpool with a depression half as deep as the comber was high.  The distinction of the first upset fell to Kolb while trying to run a rough, and hitherto unnamed, rapid a few miles above Havasu Creek.  His boat was drawn into a deep hole under a boulder where it capsized, cupping him under the cockpit.  He bobbed up 100 feet farther down and climbed out on the bottom of the overturned boat.  With the assistance of Dodge, it was brought to the bank 300 yards below the foot of the portage, and subsequently lined back.  To commemorate the event, they named the rapid “Upset.”  At the mouth of Havasu creek, 20 Indians, under the direction of Birdseye, brought down 800 pounds of previsions for the long stage to Diamond Creek.  The radio set was sent out for repairs to be brought back to them at Diamond Creek, 70 miles below.  Pushing off from Havasu Creek with deeply loaded boats on the morning of September 15, they came, after three and a half days, to the head of Lava Falls.  The skies had been clear most of the way, but a storm was gathering.  Without the radio they had no warning of heavy storms.  If they had gotten such a warning, they would have picked a broad stretch of River to wait for the flood to pass.  Unwarned, they were surprised at a time and place far from favorable – twilight on the brink of Lava Falls.  The boats were lined down the right side of the most violent section of a narrow crescent beach below.  Beds and cooking outfit were left at the head of the falls, where patches of sand offered the only feasible camp site.  The rest of the equipment was carried down to the boats and restowed.  The portage was completed an hour before dark.  After supper, they noticed that the boats were awash at their moorings, and a few minutes later, the beach upon which they had rested was completely submerged by the rising river.  They soon began banging heavily, while the waves increased in strength.

The Grand was in the worst position, being under a ten-foot wall of rock with boulders all about.  The other boats, for a while, could be drawn up a foot or two as the waters rose.  The author buffered the Grand off the rocks with driftwood.  The water rose until there was room on a shelf for only one boat.  The Marble was chosen because it was the lightest.  It became evident that better mooring place was needed to be found.  It was now quite dark.  Lint ad Kolb pushed off in the Boulder carrying an acetylene lantern.  The rest kept busy pulling in the three remaining boats to keep them from being destroyed.  Lint and Kold returned in half an hour.  They had left the Boulder on a sloping beach of limestone a third of a mile below.  The Grand and the Glen were taken down next.  A distinctly unpleasant odor from the water suggested it the flood came from the Little Colorado.  After an eerie night ride, the author pulled into quieter waters and beached the Grand beside the Boulder, on a sloping shelf.  As soon as the boat was secured, he headed back to camp.  In his absents, the Marble had been dragged several feet up above the water, but the spray was already dashing over her again.  He found everyone engaged in moving back from the encroaching flood.  After hoisting the boat again, a wave came up and surrounded the bed of Felix, the cook.  A startled Felix fled while Birdseye and Dodge salvaged the sleeping-bag.  The Marble had been hoisted up a sheer wall by block and tackle to keep it clear of the climbing waves.  The river had risen 13 feet during the night, to which 8 feet more were added by evening of the second day.  The party estimated the flow to be from 75,000 to 100,000 second-feet.  They learned later that it had been more than 112,000.  After a three-day halt to allow the flood to recede, they pushed off again on the morning of September 22.  Although they had favorable boating conditions, they were four days behind schedule in arriving at the mouth of Diamond Creek.

Navigation became more arduous below Diamond Creek.  Three days of rough boating in a river with an average fall of more than 15 feet to a mile brought them to the head of historic Separation Rapid, which, with large canyons coming in opposite each other, was unmistakable from the descriptions of Powell and Stanton.  With no practical portage, they all had to run the rapid.  The Glen was the first boat to navigate Separation Rapids and had a heavy tossing, with Dodge keeping clear of the jutting right-hand cliff.  Kolb went through next, and then Lint.  Kolb had carried dangerously close to the right-hand cliff.  The author put into heavy water at the head of the second rapid.  He was confident he could ride the waves instead of staying to the right like the others had done.  The foaming crest of a comber proved him wrong as the supposedly uncapsizable Grand was bottom-up.  Fighting down currents, the author surfaced.  He, Moore, and La Rue, clinging to the side of the boat entered the third rapid.  The boat danced at a merry pace on through the rest of the riffle, but in not in a way to make it hard to hold on.  It was not practicable to attempt to right her in midstream.  Blake and Dodge, on the Glen, worked her into an eddy against the left wall.  The author bailed and replaced a lost oar.  The little water that entered the hold did no harm, even to the sugar.  The missing oar was picked up a few miles below.  Lava Cliff was passed by intricate and laborious lining on October 11 and 12.  Burchard, the topographic engineer, was the victim of two bad falls the day they left Diamond Creek.  In the second, he fractured his rib.  Although in much pain, he stuck to his work, and on October 13 was rewarded by picking up with his instrument a little pyramid of white stone on a jutting point ahead.  It was the monument marking the highest point reached by his up-river survey of 1920.  When the two surveys were tied in, their elevations were found to check within four feet.

There were many splashy rapids remaining below them, but none required reconnaissance.  With the survey complete, progress was speedy.  They ran out of the canyon on the first day, and on the fourth day from the Grand Wash their boats were tied up at Needles.  More than 50 miles a day had been averaged where the broad, shallow river wound down through open valleys.  The party was disbanded at Needles on October 20, just over three months from the date of departure from Flagstaff.  The Glen, Boulder, and Marble were returned to the Southern California Edison Company; the Grand was shipped to Washington to be put on Permanent exhibition as the Smithsonian Institution.

 

 

The second item listed on the cover of this month’s issue is entitled “East and West in America” and has no byline.  It is not an article, but a set of “16 Full-Page Duotone Illustrations,” embedded within the first article (pages 531 through 546).  Duotones, formerly known as photogravures, are photographs transferred to paper using acid-etched metal plates.  The deeper the etch the darker the transfer.  Duotones use a special ink, and the one used for this set has a strong bluish-green tint.

A list of the caption titles for the duotones is as follows:

• “Dixville Notch, One of the Most Imposing Scenic Features East of the Mississippi”
• “A Glimpse of the Graceful Tower of Harkness Memorial Quadrangle through the Elms at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut”
• “Niagara Falls from the Air”
• “An Airplane View of the Living Rock Upon Which Is Being Inscribed, in Gigantic Sculptured Figures, a Page of American History”
• “A Lesson in Oceanography”
• “Devil’s Corkscrew on the Bright Angel Trail, Grand Canyon National Park”
• “The Grand Canyon from Pima Point, on Hermit Rim Road”
• “Angel’s Landing and Its Mirror: Zion National Park”
• “A Contented Native of Yellowstone National Park”
• “A Chicago Beach, With the Famous Lake Shore Drive in the Right Foreground”
• “The Handiwork of Nature’s Master Sculptor, the Glacier”
• “Lariat Persuasion”
• “On the Rolling Sheep Ranges of Wyoming”
• “Beside a Woodland Stream Near Gladstone, New Jersey”
• “More Than 3,000 feet Above the Floor of Yosemite Valley”
• “Mount Saint Helens, Washington, One of America’s Most Majestic Peaks”

 

 

The second article in this month’s issue is entitled “The Isthmus of Tehuantepec” and was written by Herbert Corey, author of “Across the Equator with the American Navy,” “Adventures Down the West Coast of Mexico,” “On Monastir Road,” “Along the Old Spanish Road in Mexico,” etc. in the National Geographic Magazine.  The article contains twenty-five black-and-white photographs, of which a full eighteen are full-page in size.

Once upon a time, the Isthmus of Tehuantepec was – potentially, at least – a most important neck of land.  A king of Spain considered joining the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by cutting a canal through it.  It was a pathway for the Argonauts who rushed to California in the golden days of ’49.  Captain Eads won attention by his scheme to construct a ship railway over it.  At the time, the world talked about it.  In 1850, a treaty was negotiated between the U. S. and Mexico for the construction of a half railway, half canal, to shorten the route around Cape Horn.  Nothing came of it.  After fifty years of effort, a government-financed road was open to traffic by President Porfirio Diaz in 1907.  Sir Weetman Pearson installed huge docks at Salina Cruz, on the Pacific coast, and Puerto Mexico, the Atlantic terminal, which are, even in 1924, among the finest in the world.  Perhaps no railroad enterprise attracted wider attention.  There were no great heights; the cordilleras flattened out on the Isthmus.  The greatest elevation, at Chivela Pass, was 730 feet, but the road was built through a jungle which, in the rainy season turned into a quagmire.  Yankee money poured into various Isthmus enterprises.  Bananas, pineapples, sugar cane, cotton, coconuts, almost any tropical fruit, grew while you waited.  The work was not growing the crops, but holding back the jungle.  Success seemed certain, for the ranchers were assured river transportation to the sea.  There were rolling prairies for cattle and a score of valuable woods could be had for the taking.  Those were days of order and prosperity.  Then came the ruinous competition of the Panama Canal, followed by the Mexican revolution and the revolt of Mexican labor, and finally the World War.  In 1924, most of the ranches were abandoned; the great docks were almost empty; and the railway, which once ran twenty freight trains each way each day, ran one mixed train, with two passenger cars and six half-empty freight cars.  Sometimes bandits interfered leaving the train stranded.

Yet it was difficult to avoid the conviction that one of these days the Isthmus would again bustle with business.  Afterall, the Tropics had been conquered, in the Philippines, the Panama Canal, and elsewhere.  When the world needed the Isthmus, the jungle would obey orders.  One approached the Isthmus through the city of Cordova (Cordoba).  [See: “Map of North America” in this issue of The Geographic.]  There were other ways: one might start from Vera Cruz, sizzling on the shore, or ride six days through the paths from Oaxaca, or take a steamer to either of the Isthmus’s terminal ports of the Isthmus Railway, or take the International Railway north from Guatemala, but Cordova was the most desired gate.  The author’s party had struggled on a narrow-gauge railway from Oaxaca, stopping for repairs, and spending nights here and there.  At each little station a squad of Indian soldiers crawled reluctantly from the shade to perform their tasks.  Almost without warning, they came into the Tropics – warm, lush, overmastering.  The air was soft and heavy.  The hills were covered by masses of verdure, laid on in thick clots.  “This is Cordova,” said the hotel runner who had capture them.  He summoned cargadores with wiggles of the finger and bowed them out of the car with elaborate courtesy.  The city was theatrical.  One walked against a backdrop of Moorish houses whose reds and blues had been softened by the years.  That night, the author sat at a glistening table and looked out at the dim plaza through wide arches and drank red wine from Spain.  Parrots squawked and chattered.  Officers of the army greeted each other loudly and shouted for the waiter.  Pretty ladies came in and sat alone.  The two beggars, with the guitar and mandolin began to work their way around the square.  A weak and homesick sentiment was induced by an environment that was rich in beauty.  At each corner of the little plaza rose a single royal palm.  The air was heavy with the perfume of flowers.

Tiny electric lights sparkled starlike against the velvety blue sky.  The torch fires of Orizaba were slowly burning out overhead, as the last rays of a long-hidden sun were reflected from its snowy summit.  From somewhere nearby came the sound of children singing “London Bridge Is Falling Down” in Spanish.  A bullfighter’s costume, stiff with gold, gleamed in a shop window under the graceful portal.  The butcher’s tramcar rattled by, with racks filled with beef, protected by mosquito netting.  It was drawn by four mules, though the other Cordova trams used Ford engines, set in pairs.  The band began to play.  Every Mexican town large enough to have a plaza had some sort of band.  The Mexican band was, almost without exception, worth listening to.  It was at Cordova that the author abandoned the effort to have his morning eggs boiled four minutes.  A Mexican egg could be, and usually was, fried very hard.  Hard boiled eggs could be had from the street vendors at every curb.  The author descended to the hotel office in search of coffee.  A peon or two slept on the wide, dusty floor, in front of the great doors, opened to the fresh morning air.  “Hay coffee?” he asked the hotel clerk.  The clerk was flirting with a pretty senorita.  “Si,” said the clerk, “the coffee.”  He exchanged smiles with the girl at the desk.  Among catsup bottles, sugar bowls, and saltshakers was a bottle filled with the blackest extract of coffee.  In the hotter parts of Mexico coffee was boiled down to a midnight essence and bottled.  The number of dietary taboos one discovered in tropical Mexico was alarming.  Pork, no matter how well cooked, might be poison to the Gringo.  Beef must be cooked to an oaken dryness before it was safe.  In front of the hotel passed a procession of laden burros.  Men rode little horses to work.  The women there seemed clean and well dressed and modestly self-possessed.  Cordova was in the heart of Mexico’s coffee district.  While farming had been interfered with by the revolution, coffee farmers suffered the least.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec was shared in equal parts by the States of Vera Cruz and Oaxaca.  It ran east and west, and the trans-Isthmus railroad crossed it from north to south.  The part of Mexico which included the Isthmus was about 200 miles east to west by 150 miles transversely.  The greater part of it was wet, heavy, almost impenetrable jungle, although on the Pacific coast there were land where rain hardly fell at all.  One of the National Railways formed a Y, with the points at Vera Cruz and Cordova, and the intersection at Tierra Blanca, to connect with the trans-Isthmus Road to Santa Lucrecia.  The ruins of the Isthmus were apparent even before the authors party had taken their seats on the ramshackle little car for Terra Blanca.  The station at Cordova was modern, but one approached in by pig-encumbered paths through the mud.  The status of the two daily trains, one which arrived at night and the other departed in the morning, was written on a blackboard.  Their lateness varied by hours.  The first-class coach had been a boxcar in happier days.  Square holes were cut for windows and slat seats, with black oilcloth cushions were constructed.  Some of the train guard rode on the roof and some on the rear platform, armed with rusty rifles of various makes.  When they came to the jungle, the author was not tempted to enter it.  It was thick, tangled, and two-storied.  Under foot was a swamp, penetrated with streams of muddy, stagnant water in which various reptiles lived happy lives.  Palms, wild bananas, bamboos, trees of a dozen sort, were underlaid with matted growth.  The natives carried their machetes slung to the shoulders, and one saw them chopping their way along the narrow paths.  But for the first half-day’s ride they passed through a country of unbelievable fertility.  The cultivated lands were of a uniformly red tint, which glowed against the heavy green of vegetation.  They rode for miles through plantations of pineapples, plantains, and sugar cane.  Coffee bushes were between the rows of bananas.

In front of the roadside haciendas were wide cement floors, on which at harvest time coffee berries were spread to dry.  In the meantime, they offered convenient playgrounds for the wandering pigs.  Tinkling streams dashed down mountains and under arched bridges.  The newcomer first saw in that land the wasted opportunities.  Enough foodstuff might be produced on the Isthmus to feed the entire Republic, which, in 1924, imported a large portion of its food.  The primal curse had been almost lifted there.  A native who wished to raise a crop of corn needed only to burn off a patch of grass and drop the seeds in holes made by a pointed stick.  He never dreamt of cultivating or weeding it.  Next year he burned another patch.  His hens rustled for themselves, and his pigs lived a discontented but earnest existence.  His greatest activity was finding shade.  The author’s party discovered that life in a tropical jungle was a constant battle against foes that we fortunate of the north had never heard of.  The right of way of the railroad was only kept clear of encroaching vines by an alternate process of burning, mowing, and soaking with boiling chemical solutions.  Seeds blown by the winds found lodgment in crevices of stone walls, and in a few years, a well-built house looked like a relic of the Spanish invasion, so thoroughly had it been torn apart.  Fevers and agues and insect foes were everywhere.  There was the hookworm which accounted for the lassitude of the people, and the screw worm, which bore into one’s flesh, and kept on boring after it reached bone.  This was the home of the “chigger,” which made a hive of its host and produced ulcers.  There were flying pests which poisoned the flesh if they but lit on one, and enormous ants and little red bugs which came up from below and produced fiery irritations.  Flies settled in masses, and at night mosquitoes plagued, and a devilish little flea abounded, and gnats swarmed in one’s eyes.

Thet rode through wild pampas on which a few cattle stood horn-deep in grass, as fat as butter.  Not far away was the National Valley, in which the best tobacco in Mexico was produced.  In the distance were shapeless mounds which were the remains of buried cities.  Beyond doubt, that fecund land once maintained an immense population.  Even at the time the Spaniards came, it was prosperous and populous, although it seemed to have been decaying slowly ever since.  Seventy-five years prior, there were towns where there were only memories in 1924.  As the train rattled south toward the Isthmus proper, a likeness to an African landscape appeared.  The houses became conical huts with roofs thatched with palm leaves.  Palms rose among the reeds on the banks of the River Papaloapam, one hundred yards wide.  High-prowed dugouts were paddled by half-naked men.  Fruits of every tropical sort were offered at wayside stops – papayas, mangoes, chirimoyas, and watermelon.  The author wondered why the train stopped at the stations, for nothing was taken off or put on.  The ride was almost monotonous until they reached the station of Santa Lucrecia.  It was true that there were a few sugar mills, idle for the most part, and at El Burro, a peon slept with the dogs under the butcher’s stand.  Soldiers squatted with the pigs under the houses, raised on piles against the annual inundation.  At some banana plantations were watchtowers, built of stone, which served as shelter against bandits.  By contrast, the little station of Santa Lucrecia fairly bustled.  There was a hotel in which one might sleep in a room that had been swept out at intervals.  The sheets were almost clean.  The wallow in which the hotel’s refuse was thrown was frequented by pigs and buzzards.  There were other houses – a dozen perhaps – and other hotels set on piles over a solid carpet of snoring pigs.  There were American railroad “stiffs.”  Between trains, they lived off the Indians.

There, the Coatzacoalcos River, the largest of the Isthmus, offered water transport to the Atlantic coast.  In the shallow water near the shore sat naked women, scrubbing their brown bodied with sand.  Two pretty washerwomen had erected a brush-roofed stand near the water, under which they had propped great tubs hewn from logs.  A handsome, slender woman in black asked for gold pieces.  “I will buy them,” she said.  “I want them for my necklace.”  The Isthmus native does not regard work as the chief end of man.  Because piecemeal was the only way in which Indian labor could be handled, the Americans were forced to keep several times as many laborers as they needed.  Suddenly, they left the jungle.  On one side of a rocky ravine, the jungle dripped, breathed, and rotted; on the other they were already on the dry hills.  The road ran through a rolling country, dotted with clumps of tangled brush, and clothed with gama grass, on which a few cattle grazed.  In the distance, the blue hills were covered with marketable timber.  There were tunnels and cuts in the cliffs, and salt-water breezes put life in the air.  On front of a well-built station, lonely in the hills, was the name Sarabia.  There, the Forty-niners left their canoes to tramp overland for the Pacific coast.  The river itself was a little one, hardly fifty feet wide and perhaps knee-deep.  Their spirits dropped at Rincon Antonio.  That had been a well-built village of burned brick, where were the headquarters of the railroad officials, away from the steamy heat of the two oceans.  Once there had been railroad shops and commodious yards.  The long row of brick houses in which the officials had lived with their families, now [in 1924] sheltered Indian workmen, Indian fashion.  Decrepit, rusty, unkempt cars and engines were scattered throughout the almost empty yards.  The man who shared the author’s seat had lived in that very row during the good times.

An American stood on the platform of the little station of the “City of the Beautiful Women.”  There was nothing unusual about that.  They scouted through the country on all sorts of errands.  Some were job hunters, others were tourists.  One of the greatest of the Mexican oil millionaires began his explorations as a camp cook.  The city of Tehuantepec was very much like any one of the cleaner towns of the central plateau.  It had a plaza, on one side of which was a large market house.  During the day the beautiful women met there to buy and sell and talk, while the men hung around the dusty streets or sat in doorways and looked on.  As night came on, candles began to twinkle in the market house over white clothed tables.  It was the city club, the chamber of commerce, the sewing circle, the principal restaurant, and the YWCA of Tehuantepec.  The men and women wandered from one table to another, buying food and drink by the centavo’s worth, talking, smiling, clattering.  To the eye of the stranger, they seemed very happy.  In an hour or so, the candles burned out, the tables were cleared away, the women stalked off to their homes, through the dark, quiet streets, their burdens on their heads.  Sometimes, a faint strain of music was heard through an open door.  The stars shone very brilliantly and very near.  Tehuantepec’s sole claim to fame rested on the good looks of its womankind.  They marched through the streets, erect, bare-footed, their ankles hidden by a froth of white drapery that escaped from beneath a skirt that boasted a score of hues, wrapped around the hips tightly, and tucked neatly in at the bare waist.  The short chemisette, armless and low-necked, offered a kaleidoscopic variety of color built on a foundation of Turkey red.  Sometimes, one saw the royal purple of old Tyre.  That was the everyday dress – a floating chemisette of many colors, a belt of bare, silky brown skin, the sarong twisted tight about the hips to end in a ruffle of white and dances just above the strong, bare feet.

A coquette might add a bracelet or two, or a gold chain might emphasize the depth to which the neck of the chemisette had been cut. Add half a gourd, two feet wide, and painted in green, red, and black.  In those gourds, set on their heads, they carried everything.  The nursing baby came to the market placed in a gourd on his mother’s head.  Sometimes, the nursling was three or four years old, and after mother had nourished him, he squatted naked on the curb and he and his mother smoked their cigars together.  The laundress carried the wash in their gourds and the market women toted pyramids of melons and vegetables.  The unescapable tortilla rode to the plaza in stacks two feet high, lightly covered by white cloths.  Always the laughing eyes of the women sought those of the stranger, and the red lips parted to show the white teeth.  The camera did an injustice to the beautiful women of Tehuantepec.  It emphasized the fact that they were Indians, brown-skinned and sturdy-waisted, and failed to register the qualities of spirit, courage, and sprightliness that made them beautiful.  It could not truly depict their proud carriage or the floating ease of their walk or the coquetry in their black eyes.  They knew they were beautiful, for they had been told so for generations.  They were confident, yet not bold.  The Tehuantepecs were of the Zapotec tribe which was once the suzerain of this southern country.  According to Zapotec tradition, they built the fortress of Milta, six days’ ride westward by mule.  [See: “Hewers of Stone,” December 1910, The Geographic.]  Not far away was the ruined city of Guerenguela, which once sheltered thousands behind its fortifications and was now [in 1924] but a heap of tumbled ruins.  The Zapotec tradition was one of battles, just as for generations their women had been known for beauty.  On feast days the women wore their dresses of ceremony.  The chemisette was lace then, or silk of many hues.  The headdresses descended their straight backs.

Every girl of Tehuantepec had such a dress put safely away, and there were few who did not own a necklace of gold coins, American by preference.  The revolution was hard on such treasures, and one did not see them often.  Many a Tehuantepec girl had buried her necklace until peace came to stay.  As one marched toward the cup of dry and dusty hills in which the city was set, one became enamored of its beauty and serenity.  Sometimes, a string of burros tramped by.  An old church bell sounded.  Bright eyes looked from between the jalousies of the old Moorish houses.  Utterly naked babies stood shamelessly in the doorways to inspect the wanderer.  Along the sands of the Tehuantepec River were brown and rounded women at their daily bath.  Salina Cruz was a confession of failure written in dust and wind.  It was a scattering, arid, sandy desert of houses in which the two or three hotels were lonely oases.  Once, that port bustled with business.  Before the Panama Canal opened, merchants transshipped east- and west-bound goods there, rather than make the long voyage around Cape Horn.  Then, everyone had money.  One could see significant evidence of the former prosperity in two or three substantial buildings and the way the town was laid out.  Even before the Panama Canal, the goose which laid the golden eggs had been discouraged.  Goods were robbed from the trains, with help from the crew.  Customs officials proved hard to deal with and the shippers were discouraged.  Some of the war-made business came Tehuantepec’s way, but not much.  The Indian market was the only place in Salina Cruz in which animation could be discovered.  The Indians chattered, bought food from pots smoking over hat-size fires, chaffered over bargains, laughed at the intruding stranger, slept in the sun.  The iguana saleswomen had broken the backs of their stock in trade to keep them from running away.  Some of the more merciful women twisted the forelegs of the backs and lashed them together.

There were parrots for sale, and the skins of tigers, and, now and then, a coatimundi.  There were no banks in Salina Cruz.  Now and then, a merchant needed an American credit and would buy bills or bank drafts, but for the most part they declined dealings with the Gringo.  The author entered two or three stores looking to purchase gold.  They merely said that they had no gold, and that his plight did not touch their heart.  If it were not for the foreign consuls, the stranger would find himself out of luck.  They plunged back into the jungle on the way to Puerto Mexico, the Atlantic port of the railroad.  Puerto Mexico was the typical tropical water-front town.  The streets were shoe-deep in white-hot sand.  Chickens panted to breath, lifting wings from their burning bodies.  Mounted men helped the occasional wagoner by ropes from their saddle horns.  The author was reduced to sitting on the hotel veranda to watch the long streamers of dust blown off the parched land into the green river.  Dugouts were being paddled against the tidal current, in which porpoises rolled over and over.  A lady at the next table had red insect bites on her arms.  Inside the bar came the clicking of pool balls and the rattle of dice.  The tired waitress assured a wanderer that no one ate fruit in the Tropics.  Oil tankers churned up the river as far as Minatitlan.  Clouds of black smoke poured from the stacks of the refinery town.  There were royal palms, and troops of little monkeys scolded each other through the vines.  At night, one sometimes heard weird screams from the dark wood.  The man from an ordered, disciplined, kindly countryside resented the brutal heat, the furious growth, the savage morass of the jungle.  And yet one left with a feeling of sadness.

 

 

The third and final article in this month’s issue is entitled “The Society’s Map of North America” and has no byline.  This editorial is a one-page introduction to the issue’s “Special Supplement – Map of North America in Six Colors (Size, 38 x 28½ inches).”  The article has a shortened internal title: “Our Map of North America.”  It contains no photographs, just text.

Supplement Map Image courtesy of Philip Riviere

The National Geographic Society presented its members as a supplement to this number of their Magazine a new Map of North America in six colors, the nineth in a series issued since February 1921, as supplements with the National Geographic Magazine.  Those previously issued as parts of The Magazine were the New Map of Europe, the New Map of Asia, the New Map of Africa, The New Map of the World, and maps of South America, of the Islands of the Pacific, of the Countries of the Caribbean, and of the United States.  The Society had distributed among its members, who now [in 1924] numbered 900,000, a total number of 10,476,000 copies of those maps.  They had been received enthusiastically, not only by members, but also by map experts worldwide and the U. S. Government.  More than a year had been devoted to the compilation of the data for the engraving of this map, representing an outlay of $50,000, and had special features which no previous map of the continent showed.  More place names in the Polar regions are given and the islands of to the north of Canada are shown in more detail.  Special care was taken to show, in great detail, the coast of Alaska.  In order that the map was free from distortion, the Chief Cartographer devised for this map a special projection which gave the true direction and true distance from the center of the map to every other point.  The general elevation was shown in flat colors, as on the other Society maps.  The more important railroads have been shown, but not so the highways.  Additional copies of the map could be purchased from the Headquarters of the National Geographic Society, in Washington, D. C., at $1.00 each, on paper, or $1.50 on Linen, postage free in the U. S.; foreign postage, 25 cents additional.  Other maps in the series were available at the same price except for the Map of the Islands of the Pacific, which cost 50 cents on paper and $1.00 on linen.

 

At the bottom of the last page of the last article in this issue (Page 580) there is a notice regarding change of address.  If a member wanted the magazine to be mailed somewhere else, the Society needed a month’s notice in advance, starting on the first of the month.  If a member wanted the July issue redirected, the Society needed to know by June first.

 

 

Tom Wilson

[George Thomas Wilson]

Back in August 2017, on the return leg of my cross-country National Parks/Eclipse trip, I visited the Grand Canyon with my wife and two oldest grandsons.  Here are just a few of the photos I took: