BOOKSHELF

THE COLORADO RIVER SURVEY: ROBERT BREWSTER STANTON AND THE DENVER, COLORADO RIVER AND PACIFIC RAILROAD, edited by Dwight L. Smith and C. Gregory Crampton. Howe Brothers Publishing, Box 6394, Salt Lake City, UT 84106. 1987. 306 pages. $29.95 hardcover, plus $1.19 postage. (Also available in a signed, numbered edition at $100.00.) THE LOG OF THE PANTHON, by George F. Flavell; edited and with an introduction by Neil B. Carmony and David E. Brown. Pruett Publishing, 2928 Pearl St., Boulder, CO 80301. 109 pages. $8.85 softcover, plus $1.00 postage and handling.

Every summer thousands of visitors come to Arizona to take an exciting rafting trip down the Colorado River through Grand Canyon. Most are unaware that until 1960, few-er than 500 had preceded them, or that before the turn of the century only about 20 intrepid men had made the rather perilous voyage.

In 1889 and 1890, civil engineer Robert Stanton took the hazard-filled trip from Green River, Utah, to Yuma, Arizona, to survey-incredibly-a water-level railroad route through the canyons. The party met with disaster on the upper Colorado, losing a boat and much of their food. In Marble Canyon, three men drowned because they had no life jackets, and the survey was temporarily abandoned. Six months later Stanton successfully completed his work, but not before his photographer had been seriously injured in a fall.

The railroad was never built, of course, and it is a wonder Stanton was able to persevere in the face of such obstacles. Now the field notes he kept on the journey provide a thrilling and often chilling first-hand historical account that not only gives us a graphic portrayal of the dangers the men encountered but also reveals Stanton's single-minded intention of building a railroad through Grand Canyon.

Only six years later, in 1896, two men in an open wooden boat, with no life preservers, rowed from Green River, Wyoming, to Yuma, Arizona. And they did it without any government or outside financial support, just for the sheer adventure. George Flavell built the boat, picked up his companion, Ramon Montez, and never seemed to worry about the dangerous rapids, limited food supply, or anything else. Without mishap, they were the first to run successfully almost all the rapids on the river, lining their boat around only a few.

Flavell's journal, The Log of the Panthon, well written and infused with a sense of the adventure he experienced, has now been carefully edited, annotated, and published. It too is a thrilling tale and, even more than Stanton's account, gives the modern-day river runner a comparison spanning some 90 years of white-water history.

OREJANA BULL, by Gail I. Gardner. Sharlot Hall Museum Press, 415 W. Gurley St., Prescott, AZ 85303. 1987. 31 pages. $7.00 softcover, postpaid.

Men who have been known to smoke cigarettes, drink bourbon whiskey, ride half-broke horses in rough country, and fly World War I airplanes held together with baling wire and piñon pitch are likely to see fewer than 30 winters. But Gail Gardner, who has done all of the above, was 94 years old last Christmas Day and swears his nose won't cross the finish line until he is well past 100. Gail is both a cowboy and a poet. And while the cowboy can't swing his leg over the cantle of a saddle anymore, the poet is as agile as ever.

This is the seventh edition of Orejana Bull. The other editions were utilitarian, as plain and honest as the cowboys who bought them and hid them beneath their bedrolls or crammed them into their chaps pockets. This museum edition contains a number of Gail's previously unpublished works, several interesting illustrations, and a sensitive foreword written by Warren E. Miller, who also served as editor.

Most of Gardner's poetry is humorous, dealing with cattle country and cowboys. Several of his poems reveal the character and values of the man, his love of the land, family, and friends. His poem The Sierry Petes has been recited, sung, and memorized from Big Timber, Montana, to Pie Town, New Mexico. As long as there is one good ol' boy left in the West who climbs out of his bedroll in the middle of a winter night to saddle a shivering horse and ride out to check on his cattle, the poems of Gail Gardner will be a part of America.

(RIGHT) “Gericault #1,” by John Farnsworth; oil on canvas, 50 by 37½ inches. Farnsworth, a native Arizonan, is known for his largerthan-life depictions of horses and cattle. The title acknowledges the 19th-century artist Jean Louis Andre Theodore Gericault; the painting reproduces a detail of one of Gericault's works, “Officer of the Imperial Guard.” Farnsworth's mural “Stage” is part of the art collection of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.(BACK COVER) Tucked close beside its mother, a young great horned owl finds shelter from a pelting rain at Saguaro National Monument, east of Tucson. See “Night Creatures,” page 14, for details on the after-dark lifestyles of many of Arizona's desert animals. C. ALLAN MORGAN