Customer Reviews:
Exploration of the "white spaces" of life...
John Wesley Powell lost his right arm at Shiloh, in the Civil War battle of 1862. As Wallace Stegner says of him, in his excellent book, "Beyond the Hundredth Meridian,": "Losing one's right arm is a misfortune; to some it would be a disaster, to others an excuse. It affected Wes Powell's life about as much as a stone fallen into a swift stream affects the course of the river." The war finally ended, and Powell felt he still had much to do with his life. He saw an immense "white space" still on the map of the continental United States, in the southwest canyon country, and decided to "fill it in" by taking the first river voyage down the Green and Colorado rivers, in 1869. He was the commander of nine others, one of whom was to die, three deserted, and were killed by Indians, but he and the other five completed the entire journey, and this is their story, in Powell's own words. It took them almost 100 days to complete the journey, and they ran the entire gambit of dangers such a journey entailed, including sudden death in turbulent waters, starvation, and disease.

Many of the other reviewers focused on the portion that involved the Grand Canyon, and indeed anyone contemplating a modern-day raft trip would benefit from reading the original trip down the river; but this is only a tenth of the book. Of course the overall boat trip was much longer, commencing in Wyoming, and traversing all of modern day Utah. What the other reviews seem to understate is his ethnographic work - the study of the Indians that he met along the way, and afterward, including his visit at Zuni. His empathy for them is revealed in such passages as, in referring to Spanish efforts to convert them to Christianity: "The interpretation of the picture-writing is this: `Be baptized as this saved heathen, or be hanged as that damned heathen.' Doubtless, some of these people preferred another alternative, and rather than be baptized or hanged they chose to imprison themselves within these canyon walls."

Regrettably the current edition does not seem to include the numerous drawings and pictures that are available in my Dover edition, which does not seem to be available, and is easily half the story. Numerous of these drawings are in the Stegner work, and they can enchant the reader. As Stegner says, most of these prints and drawings are exaggerated in scale and detail, but they seem to capture the essence of the "canyon experience," a magic realism in drawings, if you will.

This is a classic and realistic work of the exploration, by the "white man," of the American West, and should be an essential component of any school curriculum dealing with the subject. May we all be inspired to fill in the additional "white spaces" of life.

Grand
Quite the accomplishment for anyone, let alone a one-armed Civil War veteran.

Major John Powell and a handful of men bounce, bound, rebound, splash, crash and portage from Wyoming's Green River all the way down the Colorado River thru canyons, mesas, gorges, buttes and cliffs 3,000 feet tall and then take on the Grandest of all Canyons. This was the blank on the map which needed to be filled in.
As Major Powell notes in his introduction, this was a scientific expedition to satisfy geological and geographical questions for the country. His descriptions of landforms are poetically captivating and enchanting. Of added interest are his portrayals of contemporary and ancient Indian cultures and ruins.

A minor correction to his speculations on William Ashley who ventured down the Green in 1825 and ultimately wrecked in the rapids (this may have been edited in later editions).
Ashley and all six of his men did survive their disaster, met up with some members of the Ute Indian tribe and French fur trappers, bartered for horses and eventually began the first mountain rendezvous along Henry's Fork in Wyoming. He did not go directly to Salt Lake City after the Green River wreckage to obtain provisions from the Mormons as they came to this part of the country in the late 1840's.

A good read for those into landforms, natural history and daringness.

Cornerstone of Southwestern history
John Wesley Powell wrote one of the finest dedications that's ever been written when, as a very old man, he penned thanks to the men, dead many years, with whom he'd explored the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River. Those moving words alone intimate the power and excitement awaiting this epic adventure.

Powell's writing is so factual that you have to strain at the words to get a real sense for the incredible dangers that Powell and his men faced. One crew member abandoned early on, and three who gave up just before the expedition's end were killed before ever getting out of the wilderness. Their deaths have been blamed on Mormons or native Americans. Starvation, drowning, and accidental death of every variety threatened the crew at every step of their three-month odyssey.

This trip down the primeval, untamed, terrible Colorado River and the first ever exploration of the Grand Canyon, all done by a one-armed Civil War veteran, ranks perhaps as the literary starting point for the opening of the Southwest. The etchings in the book and the grandeur of the scenery described by Powell are extraordinary.

Outstanding from cover to cover.
I started reading this book while on vacation in Mexico and was enthralled from the moment I picked the book up.

The writing style is a tiny bit hard to digest in the beginning, but clears up and gives you a very thorough, easy to follow narrative of the Colorado.

The drawings in the book give you an insight into what they sw along the way, and made the book a truly great read.

This Should Be The 1st Book You Read on The Grand Canyon
Although this one-armed Major from the Civil War has a tendency to marginalize the dangers, turmoil, and strenuous labor that was required to forge the uncharted waters of the Grand Canyon in 1869, you definitely "get it". Through trial and error, they learned how to read the geology and how they could predict what may lie ahead by the types and angles of the strata that formed the river's edge. However, knowing what was ahead only added to the tension and they still had to make crucial last minute decisions, sometimes too late. I was totally enthralled with this adventure and couldn't put the book down.

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