tenant Ives, sent by the War Department to test the
navigability of the Colorado, ascended as far as the Virgin River in a
steamboat which he had shipped in pieces from Philadelphia. From there
he entered the Grand Canyon afoot, climbed to the rim, and, making a
detour, encountered the river again higher up. In 1867 James White was
picked up below the Virgin River lashed to floating logs. He said that
his hunting-party near the head of the Colorado River, attacked by
Indians, had escaped upon a raft. This presently broke up in the rapids
and his companions were lost. He lashed himself to the wreckage and was
washed through the Grand Canyon.

About this time Major John Wesley Powell, a school-teacher who had lost
an arm in the Civil War, determined to explore the great canyons of the
Green and Colorado Rivers. Besides the immense benefit to science, the
expedition promised a great adventure. Many lives had been lost in these
canyons and wonderful were the tales told concerning them. Indians
reported that huge cataracts were hidden in their depths and that in one
place the river swept through an underground passage.

Nevertheless, with the financial backing of the State institutions of
Illinois and the Chicago Academy of Science, Powell got together a party
of ten men with four open boats, provisions for ten months, and all
necessary scientific instruments. He started above the canyons of the
Green River on May 24, 1869.

There are many canyons on the Green and Colorado Rivers. They vary in
length from eight to a hundred and fifty miles, with walls successively
rising from thirteen hundred to thirty-five hundred feet in height. The
climax of all, the Grand Canyon, is two hundred and seventeen miles
long, with walls six thousand feet in height.

[Illustration: _From a photograph by A.J. Baker_

THROUGH THE GRANITE GORGE SURGES THE MUDDY COLORADO]

[Illustration: _From a photograph by Fred Harvey_

WHEN MORNING MISTS LIFT FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GRAND CANYON]

On August 17, when Powell and his adventurers reached the Grand Canyon,
their rations had been reduced by upsets and other accidents to enough
musty flour for ten days, plenty of coffee, and a few dried apples. The
bacon had spoiled. Most of the scientific instruments were in the bottom
of the river. One boat was destroyed. The men were wet to the skin and
unable to make a fire. In this plight they entered the Grand Canyon,
somewhere in whose depths a great cat