JOHN WESLEY POWELL DAVIS 



come them in some way and we did." The most significant 

 words in this statement are "old enough," for they show that 

 even before Powell had explored the Colorado he had some- 

 how come to understand that a large muddy river must rapidly 

 acquire a graded course, even though at the bottom of a deep 

 canyon still inclosed by high walls. 



Powell returned from the West by rail to Chicago in the 

 spring of 1869 to get boats for the expedition. It was organ- 

 ized as a geographical and geological survey, supported by an 

 appropriation from Congress and placed under the direction 

 of the Smithsonian Institution, of which the then Secretary, 

 Joseph Henry, advised that the collection of ethnological data 

 should be made a leading feature of the journey. The party 

 consisted of ten men. They embarked May 24, 1869, in four 

 boats, where the Union Pacific Railroad crosses the Green 

 River in southwestern Wyoming; followed Green River 

 through deep gorges in the Uinta Mountains to its junction in 

 open country with the Grand River, below which point the 

 name Colorado is given ; then continued down the Colorado 

 through its profound canyons in the plateaus of southeastern 

 Utah and northern Arizona to the open country near the Ne- 

 vada line on August 29. Singularly enough, no sufficient ac- 

 count of this adventurous journey was published until several 

 years afterward, although it attracted much notice at the time. 

 A few brief summaries regarding the canyon and the adjacent 

 region are buried in the congressional documents of the early 

 '705; but Powell did not at first intend to publish any full 

 report of what he had done and seen. His famous volume, 

 "Exploration of the Colorado River of the West," 1875, one 

 of the best narratives of adventure anywhere to be found, was 

 not written until four or five years after the event, and then 

 only on the insistence of Representative (later President) 

 Garfield, as Powell tells in 1895 in the preface to his popular 

 book, "The Canyons of the Colorado." In addition to his re- 

 port of 1875, several articles were contributed to Popular Sci- 

 ence Monthly and to Scribners Magazine for that year. The 

 country traversed was of exceptional interest and his articles 

 awakened widespread attention. His official report treated the 

 journey in a singularly free and unconventional manner; for 



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