Wonderful adventures : a series of narratives of personal experiences among the native tribes of America.

Date:
[between 1870 and 1879?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Wonderful adventures : a series of narratives of personal experiences among the native tribes of America. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    16/332 page 6
    tofore recorded, while at the same time he has solved a geographical problem which has long attracted the attention of the learned at home and abroad, who could but theorise, before his journey, as to the length and nature of tlie stupendous chasms, or canons, through which the Colorado cleaves its central course. While on the survey before referred to, and while stopping for a few days at Fort Mojave, Dr. W. A. Bell, Dr. C. C. Parry, and myself, met this man, whose name is James AVhite, and from his lips, the only living man who had actually traversed its formidable depths, we learned the story of the Great Canon. James White now lives at Callville, Arizona territory, the present head of navigation on the Colorado River. He is thirty-two years of age, and in person is a good t)T)e of the Saxon, being of medium height and heav}' build, with light hair and blue eyes. He is a man of average intel- ligence, simple and unassuming in his manner and address, and without any of the swagger or bravado peculiar to the raaj ority of frontier men. Like thousands of our young men, well enough off at home, he grew weary of the slow but certain method of earning his bread by regular employment at a stated salary. He had heard of men leaping into wealth at a single bound in the Western gold-fields, and for years he yearned to go to the land where Fortune was so lavish of her favours. Accordingly, he readily consented to be one of a party from his neighbourhood w'ho, in the spring of 1S67, started for the plains and the gold-fields beyond. ^ When they left Fort Dodger, on the Arkansas River, April 13th, 1S67, the party consisted of four men, of whom Captain Baker, an old miner and ex-officer of the Confederate army, was the acknowledged leader. The destination of this little party w-as the San Juan Valley, w^est of the Rocky Moun-
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3