"Mexico is a good place to keep away from just at present." This was the invariable answer to a few casual inquiries concerning what I would be likely to meet with in the way of difficulties, a possible companion for the voyage to the Gulf, and how one could get back when once there. I received little encouragement from the people of Yuma. The cautions came not from the timid who see danger in every rumour, but from the old steamboat captains, the miners, and prospectors who knew the country and had interests in mineral claims across the border. These claims they had lost in many cases because they had failed for the last two years to keep up their assessment work. There were vague suggestions of being stood up against an adobe wall with a row of "yaller bellies" in front, or being thrown into damp dungeons and held for a ransom.
The steamboat men could give me little information about the river. The old channel had filled with silt, and the river was diverted into a roundabout course little more than a creek in width, then spread over whole delta. The widely spread water finally collected into an ancient course of the Colorado, known as the Hardy or False Colorado. As nearly as I could learn no one from Yuma had been through this new channel beyond a certain point called Volcanic Lake. Two or three parties had come back with stories of having attempted it, but found themselves in the middle of a cane-brake with insufficient water to float a boat. With a desire to be of real assistance to me, one old captain called a Yuma Indian into his office and asked him his opinion, suggesting that he might go along.
"Mebbe so get lost in the trees, mebbe so get shot by the Cocopah," the Indian replied as he shook his head.
The captain laughed at the last and said that the Yuma and Cocopah Indians were not the best of friends, and accused each other of all sorts of things which neither had committed. Some Mexicans and certain outlawed whites who kept close to the border for different reasons, and the possibilities of bogging in a cane-brake were the only uncertainties. In so many words he advised me against going.
Still I persevered. I had planned so long on completing my boating trip to the Gulf, that I disliked to abandon the idea altogether. I felt sure, with a flood on the Colorado, there would be some channel that a flat-bottomed boat could go through, when travelling with the current; but the return trip and the chances of being made a target for some hidden native who had lived on this unfriendly border and had as much reason for respecting some citizens of the United States as our own Indians had in the frontier days, caused me considerable concern. I knew it was customary everywhere to make much of the imaginary dangers, as we had found in our other journeys; but it is not difficult to discriminate between sound advice and the croakings which are based on lack of real information. I knew this was sound advice, and as usual I disliked to follow it. At last I got some encouragement. It came from a retired Wild West showman,—the real thing, one who knew the West from its early days. He laughed at the idea of danger and said I was not likely to find any one, even if I was anxious to do so, until I got to the La Bolso Ranch near the Gulf. They would be glad to see me. He thought it was likely to prove uninteresting unless I intended to hunt wild hogs, but that was useless without dogs, and I would have trouble getting a gun past the custom officers. His advice was to talk with the Mexican consul, as he might know some one who could bring me back by horseback.
In the consul I found a young Spaniard, all affability, bows, and gestures; and without being conscious of it at first I too began making motions. He deplored my lack of knowledge of the Spanish language, laughed at any suggestion of trouble, as all trouble was in Eastern Sonora, he said, separated from the coast by two hundred miles of desert, and stated that the non-resident owner of the La Bolsa cattle ranch happened to be in the building at that moment. In a twinkling he had me before him and explained the situation. This gentleman, the owner of a 600,000-acre grant, and the fishing concession of the Gulf, stated that the ranch drove a team to Yuma once a week, that they would bring me back; in the interval I must consider myself the guest of the Rancho La Bolsa. The consul gave me a passport, and so it was all arranged.
In spite of the consul's opinion, there were many whispered rumours of war, of silent automobiles loaded with firearms that stole out of town under cover of the night and returned in four days, and another of a river channel that could be followed and was followed, the start being made, not from Yuma, but from another border town farther west. A year before there had been an outbreak at this place of certain restless spirits,—some whites included,—and they went along the northern line of Mexico, sacking the ranches and terrorizing the people. The La Bolsa ranch was among those that suffered. The party contained some discharged vaqueros who were anxious to interview the ranch foreman, but fortunately for him he was absent. Then they turned south to Chihuahua and joined the army of Madero. War, to them, meant license to rob and kill. They were not insurrectos, but bandits, and this was the class that was most feared.
Meanwhile I had not given up the idea of a possible companion. Before coming to Yuma I had entertained hopes of getting some one with a motor boat to take me down and back, but there were no motor boats, I found. The nearest approach to a power boat was an attempt that was being made to install the engine from a wrecked steam auto on a sort of flat-bottomed scow. I heard of this boat three or four times, and in each case the information was accompanied by a smile and some vague remarks about a "hybrid." I hunted up the owner,—the proprietor of a shooting gallery,—a man who had once had aspirations as a heavy-weight prize fighter, but had met with discouragement. So he had turned his activities to teaching the young idea how to shoot—especially the "Mexican idea" and those other border spirits who were itching for a scrap.
The proprietor of the shooting gallery drove a thriving trade. Since he had abandoned his training he had taken on fat, and I found him to be a genial sort of giant who refused to concern himself with the serious side of life. Even a lacing he had received in San Francisco at the hands of a negro stevedore struck him as being humorous. He did not seem to have much more confidence in his "power boat" than the others, but said I might talk with the man who was putting it together, ending with the remark "Phillipps thinks he can make her run, and he has always talked of going to the Gulf."
On investigation I found Al Phillipps was anxious to go to the Gulf, and would go along if I would wait until he got his boat in shape. This would take two days. Phillipps, as he told me himself, was a Jayhawker who had left the farm in Kansas and had gone to sea for two years. He was a cowboy, but had worked a year or two about mining engines. In Yuma he was a carpenter, but was anxious to leave and go prospecting along the Gulf. Phillipps and I were sure to have an interesting time. He spoke Spanish and did not fear any of the previously mentioned so-called dangers; he had heard of one party being carried out to sea when the tide rushed out of the river, but as we would have low tide he thought that, with caution, we could avoid that.
At last all was ready for the momentous trial. The river bank was lined with a crowd of men who seemed to have plenty of leisure. Some long-haired Yuma Indians, and red and green turbaned Papagos, gathered in a group off a little to one side. A number of darkies were fishing for bullheads, and boys of three colors besides the Mexicans and a lone Chinaman clambered over the trees and the boats along the shore.
It was a moment of suspense for Phillipps. His reputation as an engineer and a constructor of boats hung in the balance. He also had some original ideas about a rudder which had been incorporated in this boat. Now was his chance to test them out, and his hour of triumph if they worked.
The test was a rigid one. The boat was to be turned upstream against an eight-mile current with big sand-waves, beginning about sixty feet from the shore, running in the middle of the river. If the engine ran, and the stern paddle-wheel turned, his reputation was saved. If she was powerful enough to go against the current, it was a triumph and we would start for the Gulf at once.
On board were Phillipps, a volunteer, and myself. Before turning the boat loose, the engine was tried. It was a success. The paddle-wheel churned the water at a great rate, sending the boat upstream as far as the ropes would let her go. We would try a preliminary run in the quiet water close to the shore, before making the test in the swift current. The order was given to cast off, and for two men, the owner and another, to hold to the ropes and follow on the shore. The engine was started, the paddle-wheel revolved, slowly at first but gathering speed with each revolution. We began to move gently, then faster, so that the men on shore had difficulty in keeping even with us, impeded as they were with bushes and sloping banks. Flushed with success, the order was given to turn her loose, and we gathered in the ropes. Now we were drifting away from the shore and making some headway against the swift current. The crowd on shore was left behind.
But as we left the bank the river increased in speed and the boat gradually lost. Then she stood still, but began to turn slowly, broadside to the current. This was something we had not foreseen. With no headway the rudder was of no avail. There was no sweep-oar; we had even neglected to put an oar on the boat. With pieces of boards the stranger and I paddled, trying to hold her straight, but all the time, in spite of our efforts, she drifted away from the land and slowly turned. A big sand-wave struck her, she wheeled in her tracks and raced straight for a pier, down the stream.
About this time our engineer began having trouble with his engine. At first we feared it would not run, now it seemed it would not stop.
A great shout went up from the shore, and a bet was made that we would run to the Gulf in less than a day. A darky boy fell off a boat in the excitement, the Indians did a dance, men pounded each other and whooped for joy. Then a bolt came loose, and the engine ran away. Driving-rod and belts were whirled "regardless," as the passenger afterwards said, about our heads.
Then the crash came. Our efforts to escape the pier were of no avail. I made a puny effort to break the impact with a pole, but was sent sprawling on the deck. Al tumbled headlong on top of the engine, which he had stopped at last, our passenger rolled over and over, but we all stayed with the ship. Each grabbing a board, we began to paddle and steered the craft to the shore.
With the excitement over, the crowd faded away. Only two or three willing hands remained to help us line the craft back to the landing. The owner, who had to run around the end of the bridge, came down puffing and blowing, badly winded, at the end of the first round. Without a word from any one we brought the boat back to the landing.
Al was the first to speak.
"Well, what are you going to do?" he asked.
"Me? I'm going to take my boat and start for the Gulf in ten minutes. I'll take nothing that I cannot carry. If I have to leave the river I will travel light across the desert to Calexico. I think that I can get through. If you want to go along, I'll stick with you until we get back. What do you think about it?"
It was a long speech and a little bitter perhaps. I felt that way. The disappointment on top of the three days' delay when time was precious could not be forgotten in a moment. And when my speech was said I was all through.
Al said he would be ready in half an hour. Our beds were left behind. Al had a four-yard square of canvas for a sail. This would be sufficient covering at night in the hot desert. We had two canteens. The provisions, scarcely touched before arriving here, were sufficient for five days. I was so anxious to get started that I did not take the time to replenish them in Yuma, intending to do so at the custom-house on the Arizona side twelve miles below, where some one had told me there was a store. I counted on camping there. After a hurriedly eaten luncheon we were ready to start, the boat was shoved off, and we were embarked for Mexico.
Half an hour later we passed the abandoned Imperial Canal, the man-made channel which had nearly destroyed the vast agricultural lands which it had in turn created. Just such a flood as that on which we were travelling had torn out the insufficiently supported head-gates. The entire stream, instead of pushing slowly across the delta, weltering in its own silt to the Gulf, poured into the bottom of the basin nearly four hundred feet below the top of this silt-made dam. In a single night it cut an eighty-foot channel in the unyielding soil, and what had once been the northern end of the California Gulf was turned into an inland sea, filled with the turbid waters of the Colorado, instead of the sparkling waters of the ocean. Nothing but an almost superhuman fight finally rescued the land from the grip of the water.
A short distance below, just across the Mexican line, on the California side, was the new canal, dug in a firmer soil and with strongly built gates anchored in rock back from the river.
Half a mile away from the stream, on a spur railway, was the Mexican custom-house. I had imagined that it would be beside the river, and that guards would be seen patrolling the shore. But aside from an Indian fishing, there was no one to be seen. We walked out to the custom-house, gave a list of the few things which we had, assured them that we carried no guns, paid our duty, and departed. We had imagined that our boat would be inspected, but no one came near.
The border line makes a jog here at the river and the Arizona-Mexico line was still a few miles down the stream. We had passed the mouth of the old silt-dammed Colorado channel, which flowed a little west of south; and we turned instead to the west into the spreading delta or moraine. About this time I remarked that I had seen no store at the custom-house and that I must not neglect to get provisions at the next one or we would be rather short.
"We passed our last custom-house back there." Al replied, "That's likely the last place we will see until we get to the ranch by the Gulf."
No custom-house! No store! This was a surprise. What was a border for if not to have custom-houses and inspectors? With all the talk of smuggling I had not thought of anything else. And I could tell by Al's tone that his estimation of my foresight had dropped several degrees. This was only natural, for his disappointment and the jibes still rankled.
At last we were wholly in Mexican territory. With the States behind, all of our swiftly running water had departed, and we now travelled on a stream that was nearly stagnant. All the cottonwood logs which had finally been carried down the stream after having been deposited on a hundred shores, found here their final resting place. About each cluster of logs an island was forming, covered with a rank grass and tules.
Ramified channels wound here and there. Two or three times we found ourselves in a shallow channel, and with some difficulty retraced our way. All channels looked alike, but only one was deep.
Then the willow trees which were far distant on either shore began to close in and we travelled in a channel not more than a hundred feet wide, growing smaller with every mile. This new channel is sometimes termed the Bee River. It parallels the northern Mexico line; it also parallels a twenty-five mile levee which the United States government has constructed along the northern edge of this fifty-mile wide dam shoved across the California Gulf by the stream, building higher every year. Except for the river channel the dam may be said to reach unbroken from the Arizona-Sonora Mesa to the Cocopah Mountains. The levee runs from a point of rocks near the river to Lone Mountain, a solitary peak some distance east of the main range. This levee, built since the trouble with the canal, is all that prevents the water from breaking into the basin in a dozen places.
We saw signs of two or three camp-fires close to the stream, and with the memory of the stories haunting us a little we built only a small fire when we cooked our evening meal, then extinguished it, and camped on a dry point of land a mile or two below. I think we were both a little nervous that night; I confess that I was, and if an unwashed black-bearded individual had poked his head out from the willows and said, "Woof!" or whatever it is that they say when they want to start up a jack-rabbit, we would both have stampeded clear across the border. In fact I felt a little as I did when I played truant from school and wondered what would happen when I was found out.
Daybreak found us ready to resume our journey, and with a rising sun any nervousness vanished. What could any one want with two men who had nothing but a flat-bottomed boat?
All the morning we travelled west, the trees ever drawing closer as our water departed on the south, running through the willows, arrow-weed, and cat-tails. Then the channel opened into Volcanic Lake, a circular body of water, which is not a lake but simply a gathering together of the streams we had been losing, and here the water stands, depositing its mud. All the way across had no depth but a bottomless mud, so soft it would engulf a person if he tried to wade across.
On the west there was no growth. The shore was nothing but an ash-like powder, not a sand, but a rich soil blown here and there, building in dunes against every obstruction, ever moving before the wind. Here were boiling, sputtering mud pots and steam vents building up and exhausting through mud pipe-stems, rising a foot or two above the springs. Here was a shelter or two of sun-warped boards constructed by those who come here crippled with rheumatism and are supposed to depart, cured. Here we saw signs of a wagon track driven toward Calexico, the border town directly north of the lake. The heat was scorching, the sun, reflected from the sand and water, was blistering, and we could well imagine what a walk across that ash-like soil would mean. Mirages in the distance beckoned, trees and lakes were seen over toward the mountains where we had seen nothing but desert before; heat waves rose and fell. Our mouths began to puff from the reflected sun, our faces burned and peeled, black and red in spots. There was no indication of the slightest breeze until about three o'clock, when the wind moved gently across the lake.
We had skirted the northern part of the circle, passing a few small streams and then found one of the three large channels which empty the lake. As it happened we took the one on the outside, and the longest. The growth grew thicker than ever, the stream choked down to fifty feet. Now it began to loop backward and forward and back again, as though trying to make the longest and crookedest channel possible in the smallest space. The water in the channel was stagnant, swift streamlets rushed in from the tules on the north, and rushed out again on the south. It was not always a simple matter to ascertain which was the main channel. Others just as large were diverted from the stream. Twice we attempted to cut across, but the water became shallow, the tules stalled our boats, and we were glad to return, sounding with a pole when in doubt.
Then we began to realize that we were not entirely alone in this wilderness of water. We saw evidence of another's passage, in broken cat-tails and blazed trees. In many places he had pushed into the thickets. We concluded it must be a trapper. At last, to our surprise, we saw a telephone equipment, sheltered in a box nailed on a water-surrounded tree. The line ran directly across the stream. Here also we could see where a boat had forced a way through, and the water plants had been cut with a sharp instrument. What could it be? We were certain no line ran to the only ranch at the Gulf. We had information of another ranch directly on the border line, but did not think it came below the levee, and as far as we had learned, there were no homes but the wickiups of the Cocopah in the jungles. It was like one of those thrilling stories of Old Sleuth and Dead Shot Dick which we read, concealed in our schoolbooks, when we were supposed to be studying the physical geography of Mexico. But the telephone was no fiction, and had recently been repaired, but for what purpose it was there we could not imagine. After leaving the lake there was no dry land. At night our boat, filled with green tules for a bed, was tied to a willow tree, with its roots submerged in ten feet of water. Never were there such swarms of mosquitos. In the morning our faces were corrugated with lumps, not a single exposed spot remaining unbitten.
The loops continued with the next day's travel, but we were gradually working to the southwest, then they began to straighten out somewhat, as the diverted streams returned. We thought early in the morning that we would pass about ten miles to the east of the coast range, but it was not to be. Directly to the base of the dark, heat-vibrating rocks we pulled, and landed on the first shore that we had seen for twenty-four hours.
Here was a recently used trail, and tracks where horses came down to the water. Here too was the track of a barefooted Cocopah, a tribe noted for its men of gigantic build, and with great feet out of all proportion to their size. If that footprint was to be fossilized, future generations would marvel at the evidence of some gigantic prehistoric animal, an alligator with a human-shaped foot. These Indians have lived in these mud bottoms so long, crossing the streams on rafts made of bundles of tules, and only going to the higher land when their homes are inundated by the floods, that they have become a near approach to a web-footed human being.
Our stream merely touched the mountain, then turned directly to the southeast in a gradually increasing stream. Now we began to see the breeding places of the water-birds of which we had heard. There was a confusion of bird calls, sand-hill cranes were everywhere; in some cases with five stick-built nests in a single water-killed tree. A blue heron flopped around as though it had broken a wing, to decoy us from its nest. The snowy white pelican waddled along the banks and mingled with the cormorants. There were great numbers of gulls, and occasional snipe. We were too late to see the ducks which come here, literally by the million, during the winter months. There were hawks' nests in the same groups of trees as the cranes, with the young hawks stretching their necks for the food which was to be had in such abundance. And on another tree sat the parent hawks, complacently looking over the nests of the other birds, like a coyote waiting for a horse to die. At Cocopah Mountain a golden eagle soared, coming down close to the ground as we rested under the mesquite. Then as we travelled clear streams of water began to pour in from the north and east, those same streams we had lost above, but cleared entirely of their silt. Now the willows grew scarce, and instead of mud banks a dry, firm earth was built up from the river's edge, and the stream increased in size. Soon it was six or seven hundred feet wide and running with a fair current. This was the Hardy River. We noticed signs of falling water on the banks as though the stream had dropped an inch or two. In a half-hour the mark indicated a fall of eight inches or more; then we realized we were going out with the tide. A taste of water proved it. The river water was well mixed with a weak saline solution. We filled our canteens at once.
We saw a small building and a flagpole on the south shore, but on nearing the place found it was deserted. A few miles below were two other channels equally as large as that on which we travelled, evidently fed by streams similar to our own. There were numerous scattered trees, some of them cottonwood, and we saw some grazing cattle. We began to look for the ranch house, which some one had said was at the point where the Colorado and the Hardy joined, and which others told us was at the Gulf.
That the head of the Gulf of California has a big tide is well known. Choked in a narrowing cone, the waters rise higher and higher as they come to the apex, reaching twenty-five feet or over in a high tide. This causes a tidal bore to roll up the Colorado, and from all reports it was something to be avoided. The earliest Spanish explorers told some wonderful tales of being caught in this bore and of nearly losing their little sailing vessels.
This was my first experience with river tides. It was somewhat of a disappointment to me that I could not arrange to be here at a high tide, for we had come at the first quarter of the moon. Out on the open sea one can usually make some headway by rowing against the ebb or flow of the tide: here on the Colorado, where it flowed upstream at a rate of from five to eight miles an hour, it was different. When we reached the head of the tide, it was going out. Unfortunately for us the day was gone when the current began to run strong. It hardly seemed advisable to travel with it after dark. We might pass the ranch, or be carried against a rock-bound coast, or find difficulty in landing and be overwhelmed by the tidal bore. So when darkness fell we camped pulling our boat out in a little slough to prevent it from being carried away. Evidently we were too near the headwaters for a tidal bore, for at eleven P.M. the waters turned and came back as quietly as they ran out.
We launched our boat before the break of day, and for four hours we travelled on a good current. The channel now had widened to a half-mile, with straight earthy banks, about fifteen feet high. Still there was no sign of a ranch, and it began to look to us as if there was little likelihood of finding any.
The land was nearly level and except for a few raised hummocks on which grew some scattered trees, it was quite bare. This was not only because it did not get the life-giving water from the north, but because at times it was submerged under the saline waters from the south. Near the shores of the river, and extending back for fifty feet, was a matted, rank growth of grass; beyond that the earth was bare, baked and cracked by the burning sun. This grass, we found, was a favorite resort of rattlesnakes. We killed two of them, a large one and a vicious little flat-headed sidewinder.
All this land was the south rim of the silt dam, which extended from the line of cliffs or mesa on the east to the mountains on the west. The other rim, a hundred feet higher, lay at least fifty miles to the north. Here was the resting-place of a small portion of the sediment carved away by the Colorado's floods. How deep it is piled and how far it extends out under the waters of the Gulf would be hard to say.
We felt sure that we would get to the Gulf with this tide, but when the time came for it to turn we were still many miles away. There was nothing to do but to camp out on this sun-baked plain. We stopped a little after 9.30 A.M. Now that we were nearing the Gulf we were sure there would be a tidal bore. As we breakfasted a slight rushing sound was heard, and what appeared to be a ripple of broken water or small breaker came up the stream and passed on. This was a disappointment. With high water on the river and with a low tide this was all the tidal bore we would see.
In four hours the water rose fourteen feet, then for two hours the rise was slower. Within three feet of the level it came. The opposite side, rounded at the edges, looked like a thread on top of the water, tapered to a single silken strand and looking toward the Gulf, merged into the water. To all appearances it was a placid lake spread from mountain to mesa.
Our smaller canteen was still filled with the fresh water secured the evening before. The other had been emptied and was filled again before the return of the tide, but considerable taste of the salt remained. What we did now must be done with caution. So far we had not seen the ranch. We were in doubt whether it was somewhere out on the coast or back on one of the sloughs passed the evening before. We had heard of large sail-boats being hauled from Yuma and launched by the ranch. This would seem to indicate that it was somewhere on the Gulf. We had provisions sufficient for one day, one canteen of fresh water, and another so mixed with the salt water that we would not use it except as a last resort.
A little after 3.30 P.M. the tide changed; we launched our boat and went out with the flood. As we neared the mouth of the stream we found that the inrush and outrush of water had torn the banks. Here the river spread in a circular pool several miles across. It seemed almost as if the waters ran clear to the line of yellow cliffs and to the hazy mountain range. Then the shores closed in again just before the current divided quite evenly on either side of a section of the barren plain named Montague Island. We took the channel to the east.
Our last hope of finding the ranch was in a dried-out river channel, overgrown with trees. But although we looked carefully as we passed, there was no sign of a trail or of human life. Some egrets preened their silken feathers on the bank; sand-hill cranes and two coyotes, fat as hogs and dragging tails weighted with mud, feasted on the lively hermit-crabs, which they extracted from their holes—and that was all.
The sun, just above the lilac-tinted mountains, hung like a great suspended ball of fire. The cloudless sky glared like a furnace. Deep purple shadows crept into the canyons slashing the mountain range. The yellow dust-waves and the mirages disappeared with the going down of the sun. Still we were carried on and on. We would go down with the tide. Now the end of the island lay opposite the line of cliffs; soon we would be in the Gulf.
So ended the Colorado. Two thousand miles above, it was a beautiful river, born of a hundred snow-capped peaks and a thousand crystal streams; gathering strength, it became the masterful river which had carved the hearts of mountains and slashed the rocky plateaus, draining a kingdom and giving but little in return. Now it was going under, but it was fighting to the end. Waves of yellow struggled up through waves of green and were beaten down again. The dorsal fins of a half-dozen sharks cut circles near our craft. With the last afterglow we were past the end of the island and were nearing the brooding cliffs. Still the current ran strong. The last vestige of day was swallowed in the gloom, just as the Colorado was buried 'neath the blue. A hard wind was blowing, toward the shore; the sea was choppy. A point of rocks where the cliffs met the sea was our goal. Would we never reach it? Even in the night, which was now upon us, the distance was deceptive. At last we neared the pile of rocks. The sound of waters pounding on the shore was heard, and we hurriedly landed, a half-mile above it, just as the tide turned.
The beach was a half-mile wide, covered with mud and sloughs. There was no high shore. But an examination showed that the tide ran back to the cliffs. One of us had to stay with the boat. Telling Phillipps to get what sleep he could, I sat in the boat, and allowed the small breakers which fox-chased each other to beat it in as the tide rose.
An arctic explorer has said that having an adventure means that something unexpected or unforeseen has happened; that some one has been incompetent. I had the satisfaction of knowing that the fault of this adventure, if such it could be called, was mine. Here we were, at our goal in Mexico, supposed to be a hostile land, with scant provisions for one day. It was a hundred miles along the line of cliffs, back to Yuma. So far, we had failed to find the ranch. It was not likely that it was around the point of rocks. We knew now that the Colorado channel was fifteen miles from the mouth of the river, and was not a slough as we had supposed. Doubtless the ranch was up there. Our best plan was to return to the head of the tide, going up the Colorado, then if we did not find the ranch we would abandon the boat, snare some birds, keep out of the scorching heat, and travel in the morning and evening. Two active men should be able to do that without difficulty.
So the hours passed, with the breakers driving the boat toward the line of cliffs. When it had reached its highest point, I pulled into a slough and tied up, then woke Al as we had agreed. While I slept, he climbed the cliffs to have a last look. An hour after daybreak he returned. Nothing but rock and desert could be seen. We dragged the boat down in the slime of the slough until we caught the falling tide. Then Al rigged up his sail. With the rising sun a light breeze blew in from the Gulf. Here was our opportunity. Slowly we went up against the falling tide. Then as the breeze failed, the tide returned. Fifty feet away a six foot black sea bass floated; his rounded back lifted above the water. With the approach of the boat he was gone. The sharks were seen again.
Two hours later we had entered the mouth of the river carried by the rising tide. Several miles were left behind. Another breeze came up as the tide failed, and the sail was rigged up again. Things were coming our way at last. Al knew how to handle a boat. Running her in close to the top of the straight falling banks I could leap to the land, take a picture, then run and overtake the boat, and leap on again.
Then the wind shifted, the tide turned, and we tied up, directly opposite the point where we had camped the afternoon before. It was the hottest day we had seen Whirlwinds, gathering the dust in slender funnels, scurried across the plains. Mirages of trees bordering shimmering lakes and spreading water such as we had come through below Yuma were to be seen, even out towards the sea. Then over toward the cliffs where the old Colorado once ran we saw a column of distant smoke. Perhaps it was a hunter; it could hardly be the ranch. As we could do nothing with the boat, we concluded to walk over that way. It was many miles distant. Taking everything we had, including our last lunch, we started our walk, leaving a cloth on a pole to mark the point where our boat was anchored. But after going four miles it still seemed no nearer than before, so we returned. It was evening. The water was drinkable again; that was something to be thankful for. By ten o'clock that night the tide would come up again. After dark we found that our boat was being beached. So we ran it down and began pulling it along over a shoal reaching far out from the shore. As we tugged I was sure I heard a call somewhere up the river. What kind of a land was this! Could it be that my senses were all deceiving me as my eyes were fooled by the mirage? I had heard it, Al had not, and laughed when I said that I had. We listened and heard it again, plainly this time, "Can't you men find a landing? We have a good one up here," it said.
We asked them to row down, advising them to keep clear of the shoal. We waded out, guided by their voices, in the pitch darkness and neared the boat.
One shadowy form sat in either end of a flat-bottomed boat. There was a mast, and the boat was fitted for two oarsmen as well. Evidently the load was heavy, for it was well down in the water. The sail cloth was spread over all the boat, excepting one end where there was a small sheet-iron stove, with a pan of glowing wood coal underneath. The aroma of coffee came from a pot on the stove. As I steadied myself at the bow I touched a crumpled flag,—Mexican, I thought,—but I could not see. Both figures sat facing us, with rifles in their hands, alert and ready for a surprise. Smugglers! I thought; guns, I imagined. They could not see our faces in the dark, neither could we distinguish theirs. Judging by their voices they were young men. I thought from the first that they were Mexicans, but they talked without accent. They could see that we carried no arms, but their vigilance was not relaxed. They asked what our trouble was and we told them of the beached boat, what we had been doing, and why we were there. They said they were out for a little sight-seeing trip down in the Gulf. They might go to Tiburone Island. One of them wondered if it was true that the natives were cannibals. He said he would not care about being shot, but he would hate to be put in their stew-pot. We asked them how much water they carried. A fifteen-gallon keg was all They hoped to get more along the coast. It is quite well known there is none. They professed to be uninformed about the country, did not know there was a ranch or a tidal bore, and thanked us for our information about the tides, and the advice to fill their keg when the water was lowest, which would be in half an hour. They could not sell any provisions, but gave us a quart of flour.
As we talked an undermined bank toppled over, sounding like shots from a gun. One cocked his rifle on the impulse, then laughed when he realized what it was. Just before we parted one of them remarked, "You came through the Bee River four days ago, near a telephone, didn't you?" "Yes, but we didn't see any one," I replied.
"No? But we saw you!" And we felt the smiles we could not see.
They said the large ranch had some Chinamen clearing the highest ground, and building levees around it to keep the water out. The telephone and a motor boat connected the different ranches. Their advice to us was to keep to the river, not to look for the ranch, but to get on the telephone and raise a racket until some one showed up.
Then we parted to go to our respective landings, with mutual wishes for a successful journey. The boat was pulled down. The tide was on the point of turning, but it would be an hour before there would be any strength to it. I went to shore and built a fire of some driftwood, for the long stand in the water had chilled me. Al stayed with the boat. Earlier in the day, I cautiously shook the sticks loose from the matted grass, fearing the rattlers which were everywhere. In this case nothing buzzed. But I had no sooner got my fire well started when a rattler began to sing, roused by the light and the heat, about twenty feet away. My fire was built beside one of the many sloughs which cut back through the grass and ended in the barren soil. These sloughs were filled with water when the tide was in and made ideal landing places, especially if one had to avoid a big tidal bore. Getting on the opposite side of the fire, I tossed a stick occasionally to keep him roused. Soon another joined, and between them they made the air hum. By this time I was thoroughly warmed and felt that the boat would be the best place for me. Carefully extinguishing my fire, I went down to the river just as the tide returned. Without any sign or call from the shore we were carried up with the tide. We were both weary but I dared not sleep, so I merely kept the boat away from the shores and drifted, while Phillipps slept. I had picked out a guiding star which I little needed while the current was running strong, but which would give us our course when the tide changed, for we could be carried out just as easily.
But an hour after we left our camp another light appeared, growing larger and larger. It was one of two things. Either my fire was not extinguished, or a match thrown down by one of the others had fired the deep dry grass. I consoled myself that it could not spread, for the sloughs and the barren soil would cut it off. I had a grim satisfaction when I thought of the snakes and how they would run for the desert land. This was a real guiding star, growing larger and larger as we were carried up the stream. I slept on shore when the tide would take us no farther. Phillipps got breakfast. We were now about three miles from the slough. After breakfast we alternately towed the boat, for there was no wind to carry us up this morning, and two hours later arrived at the diverging streams. Near by we saw some mules showing evidence of having been worked. It was clear now that the ranch was near. There was still a chance that we would take the wrong stream. Over on the opposite side was a tall cottonwood tree. This I climbed, and had the satisfaction of seeing some kind of a shed half a mile up the east stream. The land between proved to be a large island. As we neared the building two swarthy men emerged and came down to the shore. "Buenos días," Al called as we pulled in to the landing.
"Buenos días, Señor," they answered with a smile.
They were employees of the Rancho La Bolso, which was a half-mile up the stream.
Did we make the big fire which had burned until morning?
Our answer seemed to relieve their minds.
What would we do with our boat? It was theirs to do with as they pleased. Leading two horses from out of the building, they mounted and told us to climb on behind, and away we rode across some water-filled sloughs. Hidden in the trees we came to the buildings—three or four flat-topped adobe houses. Some little brown children scattered to announce our coming.
As we dismounted two white men approached. "Why, hello, Phillipps!" the ranch boss said when he saw my companion. "This is a long walk from Yuma. You fellows are just in time to grub!"
[Footnote 1: The various expeditions which are credited with continuous or complete journeys through all the canyons and the dates of leaving Green River, Wyoming, are as follows:
Major Powell, 1st journey. May 24, 1869.
Major Powell, 2nd journey. May 22, 1871. Discontinued at KanabCanyon in the Grand Canyon.
Galloway. Sept. 20, 1895 and 1896.
Flavell. Aug. 27, 1896.
Stone. Sept. 12, 1909.
Kolb. Sept. 8, 1911.
For a more complete record of the earlier parties see appendix.]
[Footnote 2: The initials E.C. apply to my brother, Emery C. Kolb; E.L. to myself. These initials are frequently used in this text. For several years the nick-name "Ed" has been applied to me, and in my brothers' narratives I usually figure as Ed.]
[Footnote 3: It is not unusual for certain individual animals to be outlawed or to have a price set on their heads by the stockmen's associations, in addition to the regular bounty paid by the counties. At the time this is written there is a standing reward of $200 for a certain "lobo," or timber wolf which roams over the Kaibab Forest directly opposite our home in the Grand Canyon. In addition to this there is a bounty of $10 offered by the county. This wolf has taken to killing colts and occasional full-grown horses, in addition to his regular diet of yearling calves.]
[Footnote 4: Brown-Stanton. May 25, 1889.
Russell-Monnette. Sept. 20, 1907.
For a more complete record of these expeditions, as well as others who attempted the passage of the canyons below this point, see appendix.]
[Footnote 5: Left by the Stone expedition.]
[Footnote 6: While Major Powell was making his second voyage of exploration, another party was toiling up these canyons towing their boats from the precipitous shores. This party was under the leadership of Lieutenant Wheeler of the U.S. Army. The party was large, composed of twenty men, including a number of Mojave Indians, in the river expedition, while others were sent overland with supplies to the mouth of Diamond Creek. By almost superhuman effort they succeeded in getting their boats up the canyon as far as Diamond Creek. While there is no doubt that they reached this point, there were times when we could hardly believe it was possible when we saw the walls they would have to climb in this granite gorge. In some places there seemed to be no place less than five hundred feet above the river where they could secure a foothold. Their method was to carry a rope over these places, then pull the boats up through the rapids by main force. It would be just as easy to pull a heavy rowboat up the gorge of Niagara, as through some of these rapids. Their best plan, by far, would have been to haul their boats in at Diamond Creek and make the descent, as they did after reaching this point. The only advantage their method gave them was a knowledge of what they would meet with on the downstream run. Lieutenant Wheeler professed to disbelieve that Major Powell had descended below Diamond Creek, and called his voyage the completion of the exploration of the Colorado River. In a four days' run they succeeded in covering the same distance that had taken four weeks of endless toil, to bring their boats up to this point.]
[Footnote 7: See appendix, History of Cataract Canyon.]