High as the skies, and still and white.
—Fannie I. Sherrick.
The sweet clear twilight was fading from the cliffs, and had long since left the valley, when it came time to leave Grand Junction. The rising moon beckoned us on, however, and we look forward with eagerness to our journey, for to-night we are to cross “the desert,” to span the cañon-begirt current of Green river, and beheld the mountains of Utah. Doubtless the silent hours of the dog watch would finally close our eyelids; but now we bade Bert be sure that the lamps in the parlor car were well filled and trimmed, for none of us would confess the least desire for sleep.
In a short time the valley of Grand Junction had been left behind, and we quickly passed through the gravelly, grass-covered hills that lie between the river and the cliffs in this region. It was not quite dark, therefore, when all this had disappeared, and our train ran in a swift straight course across an open and level, though by no means smooth plain. Northward it was bounded at a few miles distant by the frowning and banded wall of the Book cliffs, colorless now in the wan light, but distinct in their majestic outline; southward it stretched to the horizon, save where it was broken by the splendid file of the Sierra La Sal—an isolated group of eruptive mountains singularly graceful in contours. The surface of the ground was drab or blue or yellow in color, nowhere quite flat, but divided into low, rounded ridges and conical mounds, by the shallow dry channels, down which have coursed the waters of the powerful storms that at long intervals burst over the desert. Stimulated by the occasional moisture in these channels, a few spears of grass and twigs of wormwood are thrust up through the soil, along their depressions; but between—over the general face of the country,—not a sign of water, vegetation, or animal life appears. It is the repose of utter silence and quietude, a netherworld only half lighted by the worn-out moon. Yet it has a fearful beauty, found in the magnitude of the space—the grandeur of the huge rocky masses faintly but continuously outlined against the bright sky north of us—the wide realms of gray darkness southward—the marvelous brilliance of the moon—the luminous glory of the overspreading dome, unbroken from horizon to horizon, almost as at sea, and so seeming really a part of the globe and not an external thing. These things impress us greatly and emphasize the sense of loneliness and remoteness. No other railway journey in the country, I believe, could reproduce as this does the impressions of an ocean-voyage.
At Grand Junction we leave the Grand river, though our course for some miles is parallel with it and not far remote. Skirting the edge of the great Uncompahgre plateau which lies between the Uncompahgre and Gunnison rivers and the Rio Dolores, the river flows west and southwest through deep gorges in the Jurassic and Triassic rocks as far as the mouth of the Dolores. This river comes in from the southeast, taking its origin in the Sierra de La Plata, and running a most picturesque course. Through its mouth it is supposed the Gunnison, before it was deflected toward its more northern outlet by the slow upheaval of the plateau, once flowed by the way of a cañon which connects the present valleys of the two rivers. This deserted cañon was called by the Utes Unaweep (Red Rock), describing the scenery it presents. The granite rises vertically from the bottom of the valley, in narrow, bas-relief columns, for some hundreds of feet; above, the beds of red sandstone cap it in broken precipices. In some places massive promontories of the granite, whose slow elevation has raised the whole breadth of the plateau upon its shoulders, juts out into the valley worn down through it. The scenery reminds one strongly of the Yosemite.
In the acute angle between the Rio Dolores and the southward bending Grand lies the Sierra La Sal,—a center of drainage in all directions. It is a mass of volcanic rocks thrust up from beneath. Like the Henry mountains, the Sierra Abajo and other groups of that region, these peaks were once covered by a great thickness of sedimentary strata bent over them; but they have been cleaned away, leaving the hard core of porphyritic rock exposed. The original shape of the upthrust was probably that of a huge dome, but the tooth of time has gnawed it into a score or more of clustered mountains rising eight and nine thousand feet above the level of the adjacent rivers. Yet there is no doubt that the summits of mountains like these, as I remarked of the elevations about Abiquiu in New Mexico, mark the depressions in the primitive surface before this prodigious work of erosion and corrosion had begun. One of the streams flows with strong brine, suggesting the name Salt mountains to the group; but the rest give pure, sweet currents when they flow at all, which with many of them is only for a few hours following a storm. The source of Salt creek is in Sinbad’s valley,—a steep-walled nook in the mountain-side abounding in crystallized salt.
After receiving the Dolores the Grand river flows straight southwest to its junction with the Green, burying itself at first in a deep, narrow, winding cañon in the red beds, then emerging into a valley of erosion surrounded by tremendous cliffs of deep red sandstone, 1,600 to 2,500 feet high, carved in fantastic forms. It rose 8,150 feet above the sea, 350 miles away; it has fallen to 3,900 feet, or an average of more than ten feet in every mile, and delivers to the Rio Colorado about 5,000 cubic feet of water every second. Considering this weight and speed we need not wonder at the profound cañons it has cut, and is still chiseling deeper and deeper, nearly keeping pace with the slow elevation of the land.
