GEOGRAPHICAL PROGRESS. 



259 





E. B. Anderson passed through it, climbing over 

 almost vertical walls half a mile in height a 

 thing never before accomplished so far as is 

 known. From time to time adventurous persons 

 have thought of trying to make the trip from 

 end to end of the gorge in boats, and one attempt 

 of this kind was actually made a few years ago 

 by a surveying party sent out by the Denver and 

 Rio Grande Railway to examine the caflon and 

 determine whether a road could be built through 

 it. On the first day out the boat that carried 

 the expedition was 'swamped, all the provisions 

 being lost, and the voyagers, fortunate to escape 

 with their lives, abandoned the project. 



The object of the recent expedition was to find 

 out if there was not some path by which the 

 waters of Gunnison river could be conducted out 

 of the tunnel and made to irrigate the drought- 

 parched farms of the neighboring region. It was 

 a question whether a " hillside ditch " might not 

 be built in the chasm, so as to bring a portion of 

 the descending stream near the tops of the cliffs, 

 and so tunneling three and a half miles through 

 the mountains a costly enterprise which the 

 residents of the Uncompahgre valley are deter- 

 mined to undertake if it is proved that there is 

 no other way to get water. The exploration 

 yielded conclusive evidence of the impracticability 

 of the ditch plan. It was found that the walls of 

 the canon became steeper as its depths were 

 reached. The party was twenty-one days in mak- 

 ing a journey of 14 miles from the junction of 

 Cimarron river with the Gunnison, near Cimar- 

 ron station, and in that distance there were only 

 5 points at which it would be possible for even 

 the most expert cliff climber to scale the rocky 

 walls and get out of the gorge. The walls, while 

 only 30 feet apart in places, are from 2,100 to 

 2,600 feet high, and as a rule are nearly perpen- 

 dicular. In many places there is not so much as a 

 foothold to be had, and were a ditch to be built, 

 the workmen would have to begin at the entrance 

 of the canon and cut it out of the solid rock all 

 the way. 



It was the project of the expedition to follow 

 the current of the stream through the gorge until 

 they should reach Delta station, beyond the far- 

 ther end. They had two boats provided with 

 extra keels to strengthen the bottoms and enable 

 them to withstand collisions with rocks, while, 

 for an additional precaution, the sides were ribbed 

 with iron rods. At the bow and stern of each 

 boat were iron loops through which a rope could 

 be run for letting the craft down rapids. On the 

 second day the larger boat had been successfully 

 " whipped " through a narrow rapid, when it was 

 hauled up on a bank, and the explorers returned 

 to bring the other one through. They had let it 

 down almost the full length of the cable when 

 suddenly a cross-current caught it, swinging it 

 around in such a manner that it fetched up fore- 

 and-aft upon some boulders between which the 

 current ran. In an instant its sides were crushed 

 and the fragments of the wreck, with half of the 

 provisions and outfit, were carried away. Not 

 the slightest trace of the wreckage or of the lost 

 articles was found during the rest of the voyage. 



In several places the river disappears entirely, 

 flowing under huge piles of boulders that have 

 fallen from the cliffs. Tearing beneath the rocks 

 unseen, the water makes a deafening roar, at 

 times so loud that 2 men standing with hands 

 clasped can not make their voices audible to each 

 other. In other parts of the canon the stream 

 flows on in silence, the rock walls rising so steeply 

 and so far aloft as to exclude the rays of the 

 sun. 



At the last the party came to ;i .Mt.mict 60> 

 feet high, between precipitous \vull- , I id rock 

 of an altitude so tremendous as 1<> exdudfi the 

 sunlight at noon. On neither side was tlu're a 

 possibility of gaining a footing by which to msiko 

 the descent. Even if they could mana^- to lov/cr 

 the boat in safety, they would be unable t., fol- 

 low it. 



Nor was there any certainty, if they passed the 

 falls, that they could escape. To return the wav 

 they had come was impossible. The boat could 

 not be forced back against the current, and it 

 was out of the question to carry their provisions, 

 even if they had had enough to last them on a 

 return trip. The canon was only 30 feet wide at 

 the bottom, and above them loomed the nearly 

 vertical walls. To scale one of the walls was their 

 only salvation, and they did it. Everything was 

 left behind. Stripped of all but necessary cloth- 

 ing, they began a climb that lasted from day- 

 break to eleven o'clock at night, at which hour 

 they had made the ascent to an elevation of 2,600- 

 feet on a 600-foot slope. That is -to say, they were 

 but 600 feet back from the river and 2,600 feet 

 above it. All these hours they had neither food 

 nor water.. 



They tried to ascertain if it would not be prac- 

 ticable to approach the falls from the other end of 

 the canon i.e., from Delta station. This, they 

 learned, would not be difficult up to a point 

 within one and a half mile of the cataract the 

 Falls of Sorrow, as the explorers named them 

 but there again was a stretch that could not be 

 passed. 



An expedition to Labrador, composed of men 

 connected with Harvard and Brown Universities, 

 was undertaken for scientific purposes. Some 

 unknown territory was traversed, and two peaks 

 of lofty mountains were named Mount Eliot and 

 Mount Faunce, after the presidents of the uni- 

 versities. 



A project that has been discussed for many 

 years has taken form within the past two years, 

 and the Algoma Central Railway, connecting the 

 Great Lakes with Hudson Bay, is now actually 

 under construction, plunging hundreds of miles 

 through an unbroken wilderness, with no cities, 

 towns, or even villages to afford traffic. It had 

 its origin in the necessity for bringing supplies of 

 pulp wood from the far north to the mills at 

 Sault Ste. Marie, where the road begins, but it 

 opens up as well a region that is rich in minerals 

 and timber. For hundreds of miles the railway 

 will run through dense forests of big trees, in- 

 cluding birch, maple, hard elm, tamarack, spruce, 

 balsam, poplar, and white pine. 



A report of a lecture by Col. G. E. Church on 

 Some Aspects of South American Geography gives 

 interesting facts : " The lecturer pointed out that 

 the contrast between the physical features of North 

 and South America was remarkable. In the former 

 Nature seemed to extend a friendly hand to man, 

 while in the latter her outlines were so rugged 

 and her forces so vigorous that he found it no- 

 easy task to contend with them. In general, when 

 he attempted to penetrate the country he was met 

 by formidable obstacles. The Andean massif 

 was 500 miles from east to west, and its plateaus 

 were from 12,000 feet to 14,000 feet above sea- 

 level. With its arm it spanned a sixth part of the 

 circumference of the globe, from the Caribbean 

 Sea to Cape Horn, thus bordering the Pacific side 

 of America with a titanic barrier. The height of 

 its passes forbade the country from seeking west- 

 ern trade outlets. Eighty-nine per cent, of the 

 continental drainage found its way to the At- 

 lantic Ocean, 6 to the Pacific, and 5 per cent, was 



