PILLING CASCADE, THE LOWER FALLS ON PINE CEEEK.
CANYONS OF THE COLORADO.
ABORIGINAL LADDER.
foot of the cliffs and roll back; another tide comes in, is hurled back, and another and another, lashing the cliffs until the fog rises to the summit and covers us all. There is a heavy pine and fir forest above, beset with dead and fallen timber, and we make our way through the undergrowth to the east.
It rains. The clouds discharge their moisture in torrents, and we make for ourselves shelters of boughs, only to be soon abandoned, and we stand shivering by a great fire of pine logs and boughs, which the pelting storm half extinguishes.
One, two, three, four hours of the storm, and at last it partially abates. During this time our animals, which we have turned loose, have sought for themselves shelter under the trees, and two of them have wandered away beyond our sight. I go out to follow their tracks, and come near to the brink of a ledge of rocks, which, in the fog and mist, I suppose to be a little ridge, and I look for a way by which I can go down. Standing just here, there is a rift made in the fog below by some current or blast of wind, which reveals an almost bottomless abyss. I look from the brink of a great precipice of more than 2,000 feet; but through the mist the forms are half obscured and all reckoning of distance is lost, and it seems 10,000 feet, ten miles--any distance the imagination desires to make it.