FROM FLAMING GORGE TO THE GATE OF LODORE.
We embark and run down a short distance, where we find a landing-place for dinner.
On the waves again all the afternoon. Near the lower end of this canyon, to which we have given the name of Red Canyon, is a little park, where streams come down from distant mountain summits and enter the river on either side; and here we camp for the night under two stately pines.
June 3.--This morning we spread our rations, clothes, etc., on the ground to dry, and several of the party go out for a hunt. I take a walk of five or six miles up to a pine-grove park, its grassy carpet bedecked with crimson velvet flowers, set in groups on the stems of pear-shaped cactus plants; patches of painted cups are seen here and there, with yellow blossoms protruding through scarlet bracts; little blue-eyed flowers are peeping through the grass; and the air is filled with fragrance from the white blossoms of the Spiraea. A mountain brook runs through the midst, ponded below by beaver dams. It is a quiet place for retirement from the raging waters of the canyon.
It will be remembered that the course of the river from Flaming Gorge to Beehive Point is in a southerly direction and at right angles to the Uinta Mountains, and cuts into the range until it reaches a point within five miles of the crest, where it turns to the east and pursues a course not quite parallel to the trend of the range, but crosses the axis slowly in a direction a little south of east. Thus there is a triangular tract between the river and the axis of the mountain, with its acute angle extending eastward. I climb the mountain overlooking this country. To the east the peaks are not very high, and already most of the snow has melted, but little patches lie here and there under the lee of ledges of rock. To the west the peaks grow higher and the snow fields larger. Between the brink of the canyon and the foot of these peaks, there is a high bench. A number of creeks have their sources in the snowbanks to the south and run north into the canyon, tumbling down from 3,000 to 5,000 feet in a distance of five or six miles. Along their upper courses they run through grassy valleys, but as they approach Red Canyon they rapidly disappear under the general surface of the country, and emerge into the canyon below in
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
deep, dark gorges of their own. Each of these short lateral canyons is marked by a succession of cascades and a wild confusion of rocks and trees and fallen timber and thick undergrowth.