The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 74, July 1970 - April, 1971 Page: 117

Book Reviews

forts of 1874-1876 were intimately involved in railroad and land-grant
schemes. The difficulties put in the way of New Mexico's admission
in the 1870's by Senator Sargent of California, for example, must have
been prompted by the Southern Pacific, but he never acknowledges
the close relation the senator had with that railroad. Only when he
notes that New Mexican interest in Free Silver hurt statehood chances
during the 189o's does he begin to talk about economic factors. From
then on his discussion becomes a broader and less purely political story,
expanding to include the fights over timberlands, railroad and water
schemes, and political spoils.
An excellent lengthy bibliography and a detailed index enhance the
book.
Yale University HOWARD R. LAMAR
Down the Colorado: John Wesley Powell, Diary of the First Trip
through the Grand Canyon. Edited by Don D. Fowler and Eliot
Porter. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1969. Pp. 164.
Illustrations, index. $30.00.)
This is a new and gorgeously illustrated edition of Major John
Wesley Powell's classic narrative, Explorations of the Colorado River
of the West and Its Tributaries . . . , first issued as a Smithsonian
Institution Report in 1875. In May of 1869, Powell and ten men set
out in four boats from Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, down
the Green River intent upon exploring the Green and the Colorado
to the point of the latter's emergence from the Grand Canyon near
the mouth of the Virgin River. This was the last unknown river and
the last unexplored territory in continental United States, and the
men expected to face the perils of massive whirlpools, tumultous cat-
aracts, and even underground rivers that ran for miles below the
Colorado Plateau. As it turned out, the perils were not that great,
though when Powell emerged from the river near the mouth of the
Virgin on August 30, 1869, he had lost four men and two boats and
had experienced one of the classic river adventures of all time.
After spending the winter lecturing about the trip to fascinated
audiences in the East, Powell returned to the Colorado River country
in 1870, and in 1871 he and a different group of men which included
an artist and a photographer made a second harrowing trip down the
river. Then in 1872-1873 he and his party moved overland, exploring

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