Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico Part 17

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 pa.s.senger rolled over and over, but we all stayed with the s.h.i.+p. Each grabbing a board, we began to paddle and steered the craft to the sh.o.r.e.

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 pa.s.sed the abandoned Imperial Ca.n.a.l, 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 pus.h.i.+ng 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 ca.n.a.l, dug in a firmer soil and with strongly built gates anch.o.r.ed 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 sh.o.r.e. But aside from an Indian fis.h.i.+ng, there was no one to be seen. We walked out to the custom-house, gave a list of the few things which we had, a.s.sured 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es, found here their final resting place. About each cl.u.s.ter of logs an island was forming, covered with a rank gra.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 ca.n.a.l, 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 sh.o.r.e 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, pa.s.sing 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 s.p.a.ce. 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 pa.s.sage, 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 d.i.c.k 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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.e 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 sh.o.r.e, 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.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE GULF OF CALIFORNIA

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 pa.s.s 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 sh.o.r.es of the river, and extending back for fifty feet, was a matted, rank growth of gra.s.s; beyond that the earth was bare, baked and cracked by the burning sun. This gra.s.s, 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 rus.h.i.+ng sound was heard, and what appeared to be a ripple of broken water or small breaker came up the stream and pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sed 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 sh.o.r.es 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 pa.s.sed, 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 slas.h.i.+ng 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 sh.o.r.e; 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 sh.o.r.e was heard, and we hurriedly landed, a half-mile above it, just as the tide turned.