It is a never ending source of wonder, to those unacquainted with the semi-arid country, how these animals can exist in a land which, to them, seems utterly destitute and barren. To many such, a meadow carpeted with blue grass or timothy is the only pasture on which grazing horses or grazing cattle can exist; the dried-out looking tufts of bunch-grass, scattered here and there or sheltered at the roots of the sage, mean nothing; the grama-grass hidden in the grease-wood is unnoticed or mistaken for a weed.
But if the land was bare of verdure, the rock saved it from being monotonous. Varied in colour, the red rock predominated—blood-red at mid-day, orange-tinted at sunset, with gauze-like purple shadows, and with the delicate blue outlines always found in the Western distances; such a land could never be called uninteresting.
The banks of the stream, here in the open, were always green. From an elevation they appeared like two emerald bands through a land of red, bordering a stream the tint of the aged pottery found along its shores. We were continually finding new trees and strange shrubs. Beside the cottonwoods and the willows there was an occasional wild-cherry tree; in the shrubs were the service-berry, and the squaw-berry, with sticky, acid-tasting fruit. The cacti were small, and excepting the prickly pear were confined nearly altogether to a small "pin-cushion" cactus, growing a little larger as we travelled south. And always in the mornings when out of the deep canyons the moist, pungent odour of the sage greeted our nostrils. It is inseparable from the West. There is no stuffy germ-laden air there, out in the sage; one is glad to live, simply to breathe it in and exhale and breathe again.
In Stillwater Canyon the walls ran up to 1300 feet in height, a narrow canyon, with precipitous sides. Occasionally we could see great columns of rock standing on top of the mesa. Late one evening we saw some small cliff dwellings several hundred feet above the river, and a few crude ladders leaning against the cliff below the dwellings. A suitable camp could not be made here, or we would have stopped to examine them. The shores were slippery with mud and quicksands, and there was no fire-wood in sight. From here to the end of the canyons we would have to depend almost entirely on the drift-piles for fire-wood.
A landing was finally made where a section of a cliff had toppled from above, affording a solid footing leading up to the higher bank. We judged from our maps that we were within a very few miles of the Colorado River. Here some footprints and signs of an old boat landing, apparently about a week old, were seen in the sand. This surprised us somewhat, as we had heard of no one coming down ahead of us.
CHAPTER XII
COULD WE SUCCEED?
An hour or two at the oars the next morning sufficed to bring us to the junction of the Green and the Grand rivers. We tied up our boats, and prepared to climb out on top, as we had a desire to see the view from above. A mile back on the Green we had noticed a sort of canyon or slope breaking down on the west side, affording a chance to reach the top. Loading ourselves with a light lunch, a full canteen, and our smaller cameras, we returned to this point and proceeded to climb out. Powell's second expedition had climbed out at this same place; Wolverton had also mentioned the fact that he had been out; so we were quite sure of a successful attempt before we made the climb.
The walk close to the river, over rocks and along narrow ledges, was hard work; the climb out was even more so. The contour maps which we carried credited these walls with 1300 feet height. If we had any doubt concerning the accuracy of this, it disappeared before we finally reached the top. What we saw, however, was worth all the discomfort we had undergone. Close the top, three branches of dry, rock-bottomed gullies carved from a gritty, homogeneous sandstone, spread out from the slope we had been climbing. These were less precipitous. Taking the extreme left-hand gully, we found the climb to the top much easier. At the very end we found an irregular hole a few feet in diameter not a cave, but an opening left between some immense rocks, touching at the top, seemingly rolled together.
Gazing down through this opening, we were amazed to find that we were directly above the Colorado itself. It was so confusing at first that we had to climb to the very top to see which river it was, I contending that it was the Green, until satisfied that I was mistaken. The view from the top was overwhelming, and words can hardly describe what we saw, or how we were affected by it.