OUR NATIONAL PARKS. 37 



MAJOR POWELL'S FIRST EXPLORATION 



No exploration of the Grand Canyon was made until 1869, when 

 Major J. W. Powell, who afterward founded the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey, made a perilous passage with a party of nine men in 

 four small boats. This exploration constitutes one of the most 

 romantic adventures in American history. Until then it was unknown. 



"Yet enough had been seen to foment rumor," Major Powell wrote 

 in his report to the Smithsonian Institution, "and many wonderful 

 stories have been told in the hunter's cabin and prospector's camp. 

 Stories were related of parties entering the gorge in boats and being 

 carried down with fearful velocity into whirlpools, where all were 

 overwhelmed in the abyss of waters; others, of underground passages 

 for the great river, into which boats had passed never to be seen again. 

 It was currently believed that the river was lost under the rocks for 

 several hundred miles. There were other accounts of great falls whose 

 roaring music could be heard on distant mountain summits." 



The passage, while it developed none of these reported dangers, 

 was sufficiently perilous. Boats were repeatedly upset in the rapids, 

 food was nearly exhausted, and the adventurers many times barely 

 escaped destruction. Four men who deserted the party, terrified, 

 attempted to climb the walls, but were never heard from again. 



The Indian legend of the Grand Canyon is picturesque. There was 

 a great chief who mourned the death of his wife, and would not be 

 comforted. To him came Ta-vwoats, one of the Indian gods, and 

 told him that his wife was in a happier land to which he would take 

 him that he might see for himself, if, upon his return he would cease 

 to mourn. The chief promised. Then Ta-vwoats made a trail 

 through the mountains that guarded that beautiful land. 



This trail was the canyon gorge of the Colorado. Through it Ta- 

 vwoats led the chief; and when they had returned the god exacted 

 from the chief a promise that he would tell no one of its joys lest, 

 through discontent with the circumstances of this world, others should 

 desire to go there. Then Ta-vwoats rolled a river into the gorge, a 

 mad, raging stream, that should engulf any that might attempt to 

 enter thereby. This river was the Colorado. 



