Texas Almanac, 1978-1979 Page: 25
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times "defeated" by "rivers imprisoned in narrow
dungeons," 1,500-foot-deep canyons of the Rio Grande.
They lost boats and provisions in the wild rivers. And
they had to detour far around the grand canyons of Bo-
quillas and Reagan. Their horses and mules gave out
and their boots wore out in the sharp rocks "and blood
in many instances" marked their progress through a
day of surveying.
"The river seems to pass through an almost inter-
minable succession of mountains," wrote Maj. Emory
in a thick volume called "Emory's Report of the Mexi-
can Boundary," published in 1857. "No description can
give an idea of the grandeur of the scenery. The gigan-
tic canyon of San Carlos (Santa Elena) has walls of a
clear, perpendicular height of at least 1,500 feet above
the water level.
"Only a faint conception can be formed from these
facts of the truly awful character of this chasm."
The surveyors did make it through Mariscal Can-
yon (which they called San Vicente) "in India rubber
boats, one of which capsized while shooting a sharp
rapid." Their wooden cargo boats had been lost in the
river canyons. Some of this land hasn't changed much
since Maj. Emory's time.
There are gorgeous painted deserts backed by
2,000-foot-high rimrocks in some of the loneliest acre-
age of the Trans-Pecos up river from Presidio town,
some of this in mountains called Tierra Vieja, or the Old
Earth. Here there are giant daggers, and a tunnel
through a mountain for a forgotten railroad to a for-
gotten mine. And the graves of Chinese who helped
build the railroad and who must have suffered as
much as Emory's surveyors.
And giant daggers, or yucca, grow up near the
crests of the rimrocks in the Old Earth Mountains.
Springs along and near the river in Presidio and Hud-
speth Counties often flow hot, mineral water. Under
one of these rimrocks in Presidio County there is a 200-
foot waterfall called Capote (the Cloak). And there is
another big waterfall in this country which I won't lo-cate for I'm sorry I revealed the "secret of Capote
about 15 years ago.
The Big Bend country is visited by more people,
and is therefore the one most written about. A century
after Maj. Emory, a European artist and author, Lud-
wig Bemelmans, wrote the most quoted one:
"In a lifetime of travel, here I came upon the
greatest wonder. The mantle of God touches you; it is
what Beethoven reached for in music; it is panorama
without beginning or end.
"No fire can burn so bright, no projection can
duplicate the colors that dance over the desert or the
bare rock cliffs that form the backdrop. No word can
tell. No painter can hold it. It is only to be visited and
looked at with awe. It will make you breathe deeply
whenever you think of it, for you have inhaled
eternity."
The late great University of Texas historian, Wal-
ter Prescott Webb, loved the Trans-Pecos and once
wrote he was always "homesick for a place that could
never be my home," the Big Bend country:
"There it lies in all its gorgeous splendor and geo-
logical confusion, almost as if it fell from the hands of
its Creator. It seems to be made up of scraps left over
when the world was made, containing samples of
rivers, deserts, blocks of sunken mountains and tree-
clad peaks, dried-up lakes, canyons, cuestas, vegans,
playas, arroyas, volcanic refuse and hot springs. "
From the Fort Quitman ruins, 60 miles down river
from El Paso, to the Adobes hamlet a few miles up-
stream from Presidio town, there is almost 200 miles of
wild river. And fewer than 200 Texans and about that
many Mexicans live in this wildlife sanctuary. (The
U.S. and Mexican governments are threatening to
"channelize" these 200 miles and tame the wild river.)
There is another even wilder river in deep canyons
from the Big Bend Park down about 300 miles to Lang-
try, Val Verde County, where the Amistad Reservoir
begins to back up.
25
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Texas Almanac, 1978-1979, book, 1978~; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth113814/m1/29/: accessed April 26, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.