Macomb’s Failure 
^73 
He goes on to say that, while the great canyon, meaning the 
Grand Canyon, with its gigantic cliffs, presents grander scenes, 
they have less variety and beauty of detail than this. They 
were here able to see over an area of some fifty miles diameter, 
where, hemmed in by lines of lofty step-like mesas, a great 
basin lay before them as on a map. There was no vegetation, 
‘‘nothing but bare and barren rocks of rich and varied colours 
shimmering in the sunlight. Scattered over the plain were 
thousands of the fantastically formed buttes to which I have re¬ 
ferred . . , pyramids, domes, towers, columns, spires of every 
conceivable form and size.'’ There were also multitudes of 
canyons, ramifying in every direction, “deep, dark, and ragged, 
impassable to everything but the winged bird. ’ ’ At the nearest 
point was the canyon of the Grand, while four miles to the 
south another great gorge was discerned joining it, which their 
Amerind guides pronounced to be that of Green River. Find¬ 
ing it utterly impossible for them to reach this place, they 
returned. 
Thus, after all these years of endeavour, the mighty 
Colorado foamed away amidst this terrible environment as if 
no human element yet existed in the world. And as it con¬ 
tinued to baffle all attempts to probe its deeper mysteries, the 
dread of it and the fear of it grew and grew, till he who sug¬ 
gested that a man might pass through the bewildering chasms 
and live, was regarded as light-headed. Then came the awful 
war of the Rebellion, and for several years little thought was 
bestowed on the problem.^ 
Some few prospectors for mineral veins began investigations 
in the neighbourhood of the lower part of the Grand Canyon, 
and the gorge was entered from below, about 1864, by O. D. 
Gass and three other men. I met Gass at his home at Las 
Vegas (see cut, page 137) in 1875, but I did not then know he 
had been in the canyon and did not hear his story. 
It was not till 1866 that any one tried again to navigate the 
river above Mohave. In that year Captain Rodgers, who for 
^ The troops that were so foolishly and feebly sent against the Mormons in 
1857 had some experience in Green River Valley, but it was not directly con¬ 
nected with this story and I will not introduce an account of it here. 
