HORSESHOE CAÑON, GRAND CAÑON OF THE COLORADO.
Sixteen days after their departure from the starting point, the adventurous party were swept into Lodore Cañon, which extends its colossal walls along twenty-four miles of the river, sometimes in the form of hanging cliffs, tousled and gray with stunted vegetation, and rising nearly three thousand feet above the stream, and again in beautiful terraces of red sandstone that spread upward till they are lost in the Uintah Mountains.
It was not until two months after leaving Green River Station that the explorers approached the junction with Grand River. As they dropped out of the winding gorge whence they had descended, they caught a view of a wondrous fissure, down which poured a rushing stream which appeared to issue from the very bowels of the earth, so bottomless seemed the channel. It was Grand River, which, in many respects, is the counterpart of its sister stream, having the same features of waterfall, rapid, and awesome cañon, into which the sunlight falls only at midday, and where night-birds are on the wing almost constantly. It is a fitting thing that these two remarkable rivers should mix their fretful waters and flow on together in a perpetual quarrel, through arid plains, until they end their differences in the Gulf of California.
ECHO CLIFFS, CAÑON OF GRAND RIVER.—The resounding cliffs on either side of the valley so beautifully photographed on this page, give name to the locality. The echo is one of the finest known in any region of the world, and the place will some day become as famous as similar resorts in Europe, which attract thousands of visitors every year. The scenic regions of our country are so vast, so diversified, so grand and so beautiful that the time is not far distant when pleasure seekers, and those desiring rest and recreation from the toils and worries of business will turn their footsteps in this direction, rather than toward the less attractive and more distant wonders of Europe.
CLIFF RUINS IN THE CAÑON.