"This region can be approached only from the south, and after entering it there is nothing to do but to leave. Ours has been the first, and will doubtless be the last party of whites, to visit this profitless locality."Yet Ives enjoyed the Canyon, and wrote some truly eloquent descriptions of it. How surprised he would be could he come back now, approach it from the north, cross the river in a steel cage, and find at El Tovar such an hotel as even the city of Washington never surpassed in Ives's day. Then, taking the Grand Canyon Railway, he could speed to Williams, and in twenty-four hours reach the Pacific, or in four days the Atlantic. We march forward with great strides in these days.
Powell's Preparations for His Life-Work. Even at the time of his writing (1858), John Wesley Powell was being prepared to bring Ives's words to naught. Born March 24, 1834, at Mount Morris, Livingston County, New York, he found himself in 1858 at Wheaton, Illinois, engaged in making a conchological collection for the Illinois State Natural History Society.
While engaged in this work, he also secured collections in botany, zoology, and mineralogy. His mind now opened to perceive that all these sciences were related to the greater science of geology, and thenceforward he declared that this should become his lifework.
Experiences in Civil War. During the Civil War, he fought with bravery and honor, losing an arm at the battle of Shiloh, April 6, 1862. When Sherman began his march to the sea, Powell was given command of twenty batteries of artillery. He served on the staff of General Thomas at the battle of Nashville, and was mustered out in the early summer of 1865. Even during these exciting years, his beloved science not only never lost its attraction for him, but he utilized every possible opportunity to add to his knowledge. He made a collection of fossils unearthed in the digging of the Vicksburg trenches, and from the Mississippi swamps gathered land and river shells. In Illinois, while on detached service, mosses engaged his attention, and he was indefatigable in studying the geology of the region through which his section of the army passed.
Begins Geological Explorations in Colorado. After the war he declined a lucrative political office to take the chair of geology in the struggling Wesleyan University, of Bloomington, Illinois. He had married his cousin, Emma Dean, in 1862, and, after a glimpse of the country in 1867, he took her and a party that he had organized, to make geological explorations in Colorado. This was the beginning of his work that ultimately wrested the secrets from the mysterious canyons of the Colorado River. This preliminary work led him on, as it were, to the greater work, and in 1869, on May 24, with four boats, the Emma Dean, Kitty Clyde's Sister, Maid of the Canyon, and No-Name, and nine companions, John C. Sumner, William H. Dunn, Walter H. Powell, G. Y. Bradley, O. G. Howland, Seneca Howland, Frank Goodman, William R. Hawkins, and Andres Hall, he set forth from Green River City.
The simple records of that trip, and a later one made in 1871-1873 (in which Frederick S. Dellenbaugh, the author of "The Romance of the Colorado River", was engaged, read like a romance. A condensation of them is but an aggravation. No one interested in the Canyon should neglect to read them, and I am now arranging to republish Powell's original monograph, together with his monumental work on "The Canyons of the Colorado", the plates of which I purchased at his death for this purpose.
Powell's First Expedition. In the first expedition, the party was from May 24 to August 30 passing through the Canyon system, from Green River City to the mouth of the Rio Virgen. On the first of September, four of the men, with a small supply of provisions, resumed their journey on the river to Fort Mohave, while Powell and his brother returned to civilization by way of Salt Lake City.
Second Expedition. Though chapter nine of Powell's report as published by the Government, speaks of the "continuation of the explorations" of the Canyon, and gives an account of the studies made in and around the region of the Virgen River, and chapter ten contains Professor A. H. Thompson's "Report on a Trip to the Mouth of the Dirty Devil River," there is nothing in the volume that suggests the magnitude of the second trip through the Canyon. This great omission Mr. Dellenbaugh supplies in his complete narrative before referred to.
Powell's Work on the Canyon Completed. This time three boats started, the Emma Dean, Nellie Powell, and Canyoncita, manned by S. V. Jones, J. K.
Hilliers, F. S. Dellenbaugh, A. H. Thompson, J. F. Steward, F. M. Bishop, F. C. A. Richardson, E. O. Beaman, W. C. Powell, and A. J. Hattan, with Major J. W. Powell, of course, as leader and director. The start was made from Green River City, Wyoming, as before, and the date was May 22, 1871.
