Between the two streams, above the Colorado Chiquito, in some places the rocks are broken and shelving for six or seven hundred feet; then there is a sloping terrace, which can only be climbed by finding some way up a gulch; then, another terrace, and back, still another cliff. The summit of the cliff is three thousand feet above the river, as our barometers attest.
Our camp is below the Colorado Chiquito, and on the eastern side of the cañon.
August 12.—The rocks above camp are rust colored sandstones and conglomerates. Some are very hard; others quite soft. These all lie nearly horizontal, and the beds of softer material have been washed out, and left the harder, thus forming a series of shelves. Long lines of these are seen, of varying thickness, from one or two to twenty or thirty feet, and the spaces between have the same variability. This morning, I spend two or three hours in climbing among these shelves, and then I pass above them, and go up a long slope, to the foot of the cliff, and try to discover some way by which I can reach the top of the wall; but I find my progress cut off by an amphitheater. Then, I wander away around to the left, up a little gulch, and along benches, and climb, from time to time, until I reach an altitude of nearly two thousand feet, and can get no higher. From this point, I can look off to the west, up side cañons of the Colorado, and see the edge of a great plateau, from which streams run down into the Colorado, and deep gulches, in the escarpment which faces us, continued by cañons, ragged and flaring, and set with cliffs and towering crags, down to the river. I can see far up Marble Cañon, to long lines of chocolate colored cliffs, and above these, the Vermilion Cliffs. I can see, also, up the Colorado Chiquito, through a very ragged and broken cañon, with sharp salients set out from the walls on either side, their points overlapping, so that a huge tooth of marble, on one side, seems to be set between two teeth on the opposite; and I can also get glimpses of walls, standing away back from the river, while over my head are mural escarpments, not possible to be scaled.
Cataract Cañon is forty-one miles long. The walls are 1,300 feet high at its head, and they gradually increase in altitude to a point about half-way down, where they are 2,700 feet, and then decrease to 1,300 feet at the foot. Narrow Cañon is nine and a half miles long, with walls 1,300 feet in height at the head, and coming down to the water at the foot.
There is very little vegetation in this cañon, or in the adjacent country. Just at the junction of the Grand and Green, there are a number of hackberry trees; and along the entire length of Cataract Cañon, the high-water line is marked by scattered trees of the same species. A few nut-pines and cedars are found, and occasionally a red-bud or judas tree; but the general aspect of the cañons, and of the adjacent country, is that of naked rock.
The distance through Glen Cañon is 149 miles. Its walls vary from two or three hundred to sixteen hundred feet. Marble Cañon is 65 1/2 miles long. At its head, it is 200 feet deep, and steadily increases in depth to its foot, where its walls are 3,500 feet high.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GRAND CANYON OF THE COLORADO
August 13.—We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, are chafing each other, as they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month’s rations remaining. The flour has been resifted through the mosquito net sieve; the spoiled bacon has been dried, and the worst of it boiled; the few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal bulk; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river; but we have a large sack of coffee. The lighting of the boats has this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry when we make a portage.
We are three-quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance, as it dashes its angry waves against the walls and cliffs, that rise to the world above; they are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands, or lost among the boulders.
We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly.