E. Hermitte and G. Bodenbender - "Catalogo Instructivo de las Colecciones Mineralogicas"

Richard F. Burton - "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6"

Al. G. Field - "Watch Yourself Go By"

P. G. Wodehouse - "The Man With Two Left Feet"

Editorial
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

A Canyon Voyage

F >> Frederick S. Dellenbaugh >> A Canyon Voyage




The _Canonita_, being more lightly laden than the _Dean_, and also not
meeting the peculiar coincidence of mounting a wave at the instant it
broke, came down with no more damage than the loss of three oars and the
breaking of a rowlock. Probably if the Major had sat down on the deck
instead of in the chair we might also have weathered the storm.[34]
About a mile and a half below we made a landing at a favourable spot on
the right, where the cargoes were spread out to dry and the boats were
overhauled, while the Major and I climbed up the wall to where he
desired to make a geological investigation. We joked him a good deal
about his zeal in going to examine the geology at the bottom of the
river, but as a matter of fact he came near departing by that road to
another world.

We were now in an exceedingly difficult part of the granite gorge, for,
at the prevailing stage of water, landings were either highly precarious
or not possible at all, so we could not examine places before running,
and could not always make a portage where we deemed it necessary. There
were also all manner of whirlpools and bad places. Starting on about
three o'clock we descended several rapids in about six miles, when we
saw one ahead that looked particularly forbidding. The granite came down
almost vertically to the water, projecting in huge buttresses that
formed a succession of little bays, especially on the left, where we
manoeuvred in and out, keeping close against the rocks, the current
there being slack. The plan was for me to be ready, on turning the last
point, to jump out on some rocks we had noticed from above not far from
the beginning of the rapid. As we crept around the wall I stood up with
the bight of the line in one hand, while Jack pulled in till we began to
drift down stern foremost alongshore. At the proper moment I made my
leap exactly calculated. Unluckily at the instant the capricious
Colorado threw a "boil" up between the bow and the flat rock I was
aiming at, turning the bow out several feet, and instead of landing
where I intended I disappeared in deep water. I clung to the line and
the acceleration of the boat's descent quickly pulled me back to the
surface. She was gliding rapidly past more rocks and the Major jumped
for them with the purpose of catching the rope, but they were so
isolated and covered with rushing water that he had all he could do to
take care of himself. Jones then tried the same thing, but with the same
result. Jack stuck to his post. I went hand over hand to the bow as fast
as I could, and reaching the gunwale I was on board in a second. One of
my oars had somehow come loose, but Jack had caught it and now handed it
to me. We took our places and surveyed the chances. Apparently we were
in for running the rapid stern foremost and we prepared for it, but in
the middle of the stream there was a rock of most gigantic proportions
sloping up the river in such a way that the surges alternately rolled
upon it and then slid back. Partly up the slope we were drawn by this
power, and on the down rush the boat turned and headed diagonally just
right for reaching the left bank. We saw our opportunity and, pulling
with every muscle, lodged the _Dean_ behind a huge boulder at the very
beginning of the main rapid, where I made the line fast in the twinkle
of an eye. Meanwhile the Major had hastily scrambled up to where he
could see down the canyon, and he heard Jack's hearty shout of "All
right!" Lowering the _Dean_ a couple of rods farther to a sandbank at
the mouth of a gulch we went into camp feeling that we had done enough
river work for one day, and the _Canonita's_ crew without accident
lowered down to the same place before Andy had supper ready. My hat had
come off in my deep plunge and beyond this I did not have one. Near by
was a small clear spring that gave us another treat of palatable water,
the Colorado now being muddier than ever, as it was still on the rise,
coming up three feet more while we were here. The entire day's run was
eight and one-eighth miles. The Major and Prof. succeeded in getting
down three miles on foot to reconnoitre.

[Illustration: The Grand Canyon.

Character of River in Rapids.

Photograph by F. S. Dellenbaugh, 1907.]

Continuing in the morning, September 4th, we lowered the boats past the
remainder of the rapid and then shoved out into the terrific current
once more. Water could hardly run faster than it now did, except in a
fall or rapid. The canyon was narrow and for five miles we encountered
the worst whirlpools we had anywhere seen. The descent was swift and
continuous, but the river was broken only by the whirlpools and "boils"
as we called them, the surface suddenly seeming to boil up and run over.
These upshoots, as a rule, seemed to follow whirlpools. In the latter
the water for a diameter of twenty or twenty-five feet would revolve
around a centre with great rapidity, the surface inclining to the
vortex, the top of which was perhaps eighteen or twenty inches lower
than the general level. The vortex itself was perfectly formed, like a
large funnel, and about six or eight inches in diameter, where it began
to be a hole in the water, tapering thence down in four or five feet to
a mere point. The same effect is often seen when the water is flowing
out of a round wash-basin through a pipe at the bottom. These were the
most perfect whirlpools I have ever seen, those above having been
lacking in so distinct a vortex. There were many and we could often see
them ahead, but try as we would to cleave through without a complete
revolution or two of the boat we could not do it. The boats sank down
into the hollow, enabling one to look over the side into the spinning
opening, but the boats, being almost as long as the whirlpool's usual
diameter, could not be pulled in and we were not alarmed. We found it
rather interesting to see if we could get through without turning, but
we never did. Any ordinary short object or one that could be tipped on
end would surely go out of sight. So furious ran the river along this
stretch that we found it impossible to stop, the boats being like bits
of paper in a mill-race, swinging from one side to the other, and
whirling round and round as we were swept along between the narrow walls
till we ran the granite under about five miles from our last camp.
Finally, after a run all told of fourteen miles with twenty-three
rapids, we made Camp 103 with walls of friendly sandstone about us. Here
again we discovered a small clear spring for drinking and cooking
purposes. There was no rain this day and at night we put on our dry
clothes with confidence and had a warm comfortable camp with a good
sound sleep.

Thursday morning found us early on the river, which to our surprise
turned suddenly in a north-north-east direction. When we had gone about
nine miles and had run the granite up and down again, it began to turn
to the west. At one point the river was not more than fifty feet wide;
the current was everywhere exceedingly strong and there were many
rapids, of which we ran twelve, and made a portage at another, and a
let-down at still another. We camped at the end of the nine miles on a
small sandbank, with the total height of walls about four thousand feet,
breaking back in terraces after about eight hundred feet. Clem and Jack
made a number of photographs wherever practicable, and altogether they
had succeeded in securing a representative collection.

During the morning of Friday, September 6th, we ran two rapids in two
miles, which brought us to one which we thought required a let-down and
we made it. As it was easy, Jack and Clem busied themselves
photographing while we were doing it, and we also had dinner here. About
two o'clock we went on and in less than three miles ran four rapids, the
fourth being an exceedingly heavy fall, at the foot of which we went
into camp on the right bank. A little distance above on the same side of
the river was a fine clear cold creek larger than the Paria in quantity
of water. We called it Tapeats Creek, because a Pai Ute of that name,
who had pointed it out to the Major from the Kaibab, claimed it. During
the day the work had been far less strenuous, there were few whirlpools,
the river was falling, and it was in every way much easier than above in
the granite. A morning was spent at Tapeats Creek for examinations, and
we found there some ancient house ruins not far up the side canyon. I
discovered a fine large metate or Indian mill, deeply hollowed out, and
foolishly attempted to take it to camp. On arriving there it was so
heavy I had to drop it and it broke in two, much to the Major's disgust,
who told me I ought to have let it alone, a fact which I realised then
also. Our rations were now running very low again, for we had taken more
days for this passage than were planned, and as soon as we launched
forth after dinner we began to look longingly for the mouth of Kanab
Canyon and the pack-train. The river was much easier in every respect,
and after our experience of the previous days it seemed mere play. The
granite ran up for a mile or two, but then we entered sedimentary strata
and came to a pretty little cascade falling through a crevice on the
right from a valley hidden behind a low wall. We at once recognised it
as one which Beaman had photographed when he and Riley had made their
way up along the rocks from the mouth of the Kanab during the winter. We
remembered that they had called it ten miles to the Kanab from this
place, and after we had climbed up to examine what they had named
Surprise Valley we went on expecting to reach the Kanab before night.
Running several small and one fairly large rapid, we saw, after twelve
miles from the last camp, a seeming crack on the right, and a few
seconds later heard a wild yelling. In a little while we landed and
lowered to the head of a rapid, and running to the right up the
backwater into the mouth of the Kanab Canyon, we found George Adair,
Nathan Adams, and Joe Hamblin, our three faithful packers, waiting there
for us with the rations. They had grown very anxious, for we were
several days overdue, and they feared we had been destroyed,--a fear
that was emphasised by one of Andy's discarded shirts washing ashore at
their feet. We pulled the boats a short distance up the Kanab on the
backwater and made a comfortable camp, 106, on its right bank, where we
were soon lost in letters and papers the pack-train had brought down.

Our altitude was now 1800 feet above sea-level, showing a descent from
the Little Colorado, in about 70 miles, of 890 feet, with 131 rapids
run, besides six let-downs and seven portages. The total descent from
the Paria was 1370 feet.


FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 32: There is but one Grand Canyon--the one here referred to.
Persons unfamiliar with Western geography frequently confound the Canyon
of the Arkansas with that of the Colorado because the former is in the
state of Colorado. The Grand Canyon is in Arizona but on the
_Colorado_ River.]

[Footnote 33: Professor Thompson in his diary calls the descent 130 feet
in three-quarters of a mile.]

[Footnote 34: For the benefit of any one who contemplates descending the
Colorado I would state that unsinkable boats are the only kind to use
and the centre of gravity should be kept low. Cork life-jackets are
indispensable.]




CHAPTER XV

A New Departure--Farewell to the Boats--Out to the World
through Kanab Canyon--A Midnight Ride--At the Innupin
Picavu--Prof. Reconnoitres the Shewits Country--Winter
Quarters in Kanab--Making the Preliminary Map--Another New
Year--Across a high Divide in a Snow-storm--Down the Sevier in
Winter--The Last Summons.


The day following our arrival at the mouth of the Kanab Canyon was
Sunday, September 8th, and with the exception of some observations taken
by Prof., and the writing of notes, the whole camp was in a state of
rest. After our trying work in the granite we enjoyed immensely the
lying around warm and dry with plenty to eat. Monday morning everybody
expected to begin preparations for the descent to the Grand Wash. We
were surprised just as we were about to rise from our places around the
canvas on which breakfast had been spread, when the Major, who was
sitting in his chair thinking, suddenly exclaimed, "Well, boys, our
voyage is done!" In a way these words were a disappointment, for we all
wanted to complete the task and we were entirely ready to go on,
notwithstanding that our recent experience with high water in the
granite indicated great hazard ahead, where there was more granite; but
on the whole the disappointment was agreeable. We knew the second
granite gorge toward the lower end of the chasm to be nearly as bad as
the first one. There was besides one exceedingly difficult passage
there, which Prof. called Catastrophe Rapid, where the Howlands and Dunn
had left the first party, which on the prevailing stage of water the
Major believed would be foolhardy to attempt. Prof. in his diary says,
"It is nonsense to think of trying the lower bend with this water." He
and the Major had talked the matter over Saturday night and thought of
stopping about forty miles down at Mount Trumbull, where we knew we
could climb out; then they thought of sending only one boat that far,
but by Sunday night they decided to end all river work here. Prof. said
he could map the course from the notes of the first party and that he
would rather explore the adjacent country by land.[35] There were some
breaks in the notes from here down to Catastrophe Rapid, due to the fact
that when the papers were divided on that memorable day on which the
Howlands and Dunn left the party, instead of each division having a full
copy of all the notes, by a mistake they had only portions of both sets.
In addition to the difficulty of the forbidding Catastrophe Rapid there
was a possibility of an attack on us by the Shewits. Jacob through one
of his Pai Ute friends had information that they were preparing to lay
an ambush, and he sent warning to that effect. Jacob knew the natives
too well to have given us this notice unless he thought it a real
danger, but we did not allow it much consideration at the time. Yet it
would have been an easy matter for the Shewits to secrete themselves
where they could fall upon us in the night when we were used up by
working through some bad rapid, and then, hiding the goods, throw our
bodies into the river and burn the boats, or even turn them loose, thus
leaving no proof of their action, our disappearance naturally being laid
to destruction by the river, a termination generally anticipated. I have
sometimes thought that when they killed the Howlands and Dunn they did
it deliberately to get their guns and clothes, thinking it would not be
found out, or at least that they could put forth a good excuse, as they
did.

[Illustration: The Grand Canyon.

At a Rapid--Low Water.]

We were in the field to accomplish certain work and not to perform a
spectacular feat, and the Major and Prof. having decided that the
descent of the remainder of the canyon, considering all the
circumstances, was for us impracticable and unnecessary, we prepared to
leave for Kanab. We unpacked the good old boats rather reluctantly. They
had come to possess a personality as such inanimate objects will, having
been our faithful companions and our reliance for many a hundred
difficult miles, and it seemed like desertion to abandon them so
carelessly to destruction. We ought to have had a funeral pyre. The
flags of the boats, which Mrs. Thompson had made and which had been
carried in them the entire way, were still to be disposed of, and that
of the _Dean_ was generously voted to me by the Major, Jack, and Jones,
who had crew claims to it; that of the _Nellie Powell_ was awarded to
Steward; while Clem received the _Canonita's_. I tried to persuade the
Major to pack the _Dean_ out in sections and send her east to be kept as
a souvenir of the voyage, but he would not then listen to it, though
years later he admitted that he regretted not taking my suggestion.
Three years afterward I came back to this place with my own party and
would then have executed my desire, but no trace of our former outfit
remained except a hatch from one of the middle cabins, and the Major's
chair. The latter I carried to Salt Lake, where I presented it to Cap,
who was living there.

As before mentioned, the Colorado was so extremely high that the water
backed up into the Kanab Canyon, and it was there that we left the
boats, each tied to an oar stuck in the ground.[36] We could not get all
the goods on the horses of the pack-train, and left a portion to be
brought out later. Jack and Clem remained to make photographs, and
taking a last look at the boats, with a good-bye to all, we turned our
faces up the narrow chasm of the Kanab. A small stream ran in the
bottom, and this formed large pools amongst numerous ponderous boulders
that had fallen in from the top of the walls some three thousand feet
above our heads, the bottom being hardly more than sixty to seventy-five
feet wide. It was with considerable difficulty that we got the animals
past some of these places, and in one or two the pools were so long and
deep they had to swim a little. The prospectors the year before had
worked a trail to some extent, but here, where the floods ran high at
times, changes occurred frequently. By five o'clock we had gone about
eight miles up this slow, rough way, and arrived at a singular spring,
where we went into camp. This we called Shower-Bath Spring. The water
charged with lime had built out from the wall a semi-circular mass
covered by ferns, which was cut away below by the floods till one could
walk under in the sprinkling streams percolating through it. It was a
very pretty place, but like all of its kind in the deep gorges it was a
favourite resort for tarantulas, many of which we had seen in the depths
of the Grand Canyon. These, with scorpions, rattlesnakes, and
Gila-monsters, were the poisonous reptiles of the gorge.

[Illustration:

B. Preliminary map of a portion of the southern part of the unknown
country indicated by the blank space on Map A at page 95, showing the
Hurricane Ledge, Uinkaret and Shewits Mountains, and the course of the
Grand Canyon from the mouth of Kanab Canyon to the Grand Wash. The
Howlands and Dunn left the first expedition at Catastrophe Rapid, at the
sharp bend a few miles below the intersection of the river and longitude
113 deg. 30', climbed out to the north, and were killed near Mt.
Dellenbaugh.]

The next morning, Tuesday, the 10th of September, our pack-train was
early on the way. The walls grew somewhat lower, though still two
thousand feet high, and the canyon was usually seventy-five to one
hundred feet wide at the bottom. There were patches of alluvial deposit
now along the sides of the watercourse, covered by fields of cactus
loaded with "apples," the prickly leaves compelling us to keep the trail
the prospectors had made by their passage to and from the ephemeral
Eldorado. After a time we emerged from the lower canyon into a wider one
in the way previously described; that is, like going from one floor to
another by an incline between narrow walls. The little stream having
vanished, a pool of rain-water helped us out for dinner, and while it
was preparing Prof. and I climbed up to secure notes on the topography.
A trifle before sunset we arrived at the cedar tree, a short distance
below the mouth of the Shinumo Canyon, where our party had camped the
previous March. The pockets were full of clear, fresh water, and we had
plenty for horses as well as men. Not far off some human bones were
found, old and bleached. We thought they must be the remains of one of
the Navajo raiders who escaped wounded from the Mormon attack near this
locality. The canyon bottom was quite wide at this point and
comparatively level, covered by rushes and grass, and the horses were
able to get a good meal.

During the day every time I dismounted to take compass bearings on the
trail I felt a sharp, peculiar pain shoot up my right leg from in front
about half-way between ankle and knee. I could only discover a small red
spot at the initial point, and concluded that I must have struck a sharp
rock or cactus spine. Our party now again divided, the Major and Jones
going up Shinumo Canyon to the Kaibab region, while Prof. and I rode on
up the Kanab Canyon, starting at eight o'clock in the morning,
Wednesday, September 11th, and riding steadily all day. As we had not
expected to come out in this way saddles were scarce. Prof. and the
Major had two of the three used by the packers, while the third was
awarded to Jones, who was to have a long ride on the Kaibab trip. The
rest of us had to make shift as we could, and I rigged up a "sawbuck"
pack-saddle, with rope loops for stirrups and a blanket across it to sit
on. This was not much better than, or as good perhaps as, bareback, and
the horse was a very hard trotter. We wished to reach Kanab that night.
We kept on at as rapid a gait as the canyon would permit, though it was
easier than in March, when the numerous miners had not yet broken a way
by their ingress and egress in search of the fabulous gold that was
supposed to exist somewhere in the inaccessibility of the great chasm.
The harder a locality is to arrive at the bigger the stories of its
wealth, while often in the attempts to reach it the prospector treads
heedlessly ground that holds fortunes up to his very eyes. We continued
straight up Kanab Canyon, the walls running lower and lower, till there
was nothing but rounded hills. Then we emerged on the summit, which was
a valley bottom, about twenty miles from Kanab. Shortly after dark we
halted for a bite to eat and a brief rest before striking for our old
storehouse, a log cabin in Jacob's corral, where we arrived about eleven
o'clock, having made about forty miles. I collected all the blankets I
could find, and, throwing them on the inside of Jacob's garden fence, I
was almost immediately asleep, and knew nothing till Jacob came along
and said a "Good-morning." My ablutions over, I went to Sister Louisa's
to breakfast with Prof. and Mrs. Thompson. The gardens were now
yielding an abundance of fresh fruits, peaches, melons, etc., and I
blessed the good management and foresight that directed the immediate
planting of these things in a Mormon settlement. It seemed as if I could
not get my fill.

[Illustration:

C. Preliminary map of a portion of the central part of the unknown
country indicated by the blank space on Map A at page 95, showing the
Kaibab Plateau, mouth of the Paria, Echo Peaks, House Rock Valley, and
the course of part of Glen Canyon and of Marble Canyon and the Grand
Canyon to the mouth of the Kanab Canyon. El Vado is at the western
intersection of the 37th parallel and the Colorado River, and Kanab is
in the upper left-hand corner of the map--just above the 37th parallel
which is the boundary between Utah and Arizona. The words "Old Spanish
Trail from Santa Fe to Los Angeles" near El Vado were added in
Washington and are incorrect. The old Spanish trail crossed at Gunnison
Crossing far north of this point, which was barely known before 1858.]

Friday the 13th, the next day, was my birthday and Mrs. Thompson, who
was always striving to do something to make our circumstances pleasant,
prepared a large peach pie with her own hands in celebration. The Major
and Jones having come in the night before, we passed most of the time
that day in a large tent eating melons, the Major acting as carver of
the fruit. When we had eaten a watermelon he would declare that he
thought muskmelon far better. We all agreed. He would cut one only to
find when we had eaten it that we had changed our minds and wanted
watermelon, which see-saw opinions we kept up till all the melons were
gone. It would be impossible for any one who had not had our canyon fare
to appreciate the exhilarating effect of this fresh fruit.

My leg, which had developed the pain coming up the Kanab Canyon, now
swelled till it was almost the same size throughout and any pressure
made an imprint as in a piece of putty. No one knew what to make of it.
I rode over to Johnson's, that person being the nearest to a doctor of
any one in the country, though the Mormons do not much believe in
medicines, and he gave me a liniment to apply. This did no good. In a
few days the swelling disappeared except where the spot of keen pain
was, and there a lump was left half as large as a man's fist, with two
small red spots in the middle of it. I now concluded that these spots
marked the bite of a tarantula that must have gotten in my blankets at
Shower-Bath Spring. Suppuration set in at the spots where the flesh
turned black and all the men said it was a bad-looking wound. They
thought I would lose my leg. I concluded to poultice it to draw out any
poison that remained, and kept bread-and-milk applied continuously.
After a while it seemed to have a tendency to heal.

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