and there or sheltered at the
roots of the sage, mean nothing; the grama-grass hidden in the
grease-wood is unnoticed or mistaken for a weed.

But if the land was bare of verdure, the rock saved it from being
monotonous. Varied in colour, the red rock predominated--blood-red at
mid-day, orange-tinted at sunset, with gauze-like purple shadows, and
with the delicate blue outlines always found in the Western distances;
such a land could never be called uninteresting.

The banks of the stream, here in the open, were always green. From an
elevation they appeared like two emerald bands through a land of red,
bordering a stream the tint of the aged pottery found along its
shores. We were continually finding new trees and strange shrubs.
Beside the cottonwoods and the willows there was an occasional
wild-cherry tree; in the shrubs were the service-berry, and the
squaw-berry, with sticky, acid-tasting fruit. The cacti were small,
and excepting the prickly pear were confined nearly altogether to a
small "pin-cushion" cactus, growing a little larger as we travelled
south. And always in the mornings when out of the deep canyons the
moist, pungent odour of the sage greeted our nostrils. It is
inseparable from the West. There is no stuffy germ-laden air there,
out in the sage; one is glad to live, simply to breathe it in and
exhale and breathe again.

In Stillwater Canyon the walls ran up to 1300 feet in height, a narrow
canyon, with precipitous sides. Occasionally we could see great
columns of rock standing on top of the mesa. Late one evening we saw
some small cliff dwellings several hundred feet above the river, and a
few crude ladders leaning against the cliff below the dwellings. A
suitable camp could not be made here, or we would have stopped to
examine them. The shores were slippery with mud and quicksands, and
there was no fire-wood in sight. From here to the end of the canyons
we would have to depend almost entirely on the drift-piles for
fire-wood.

A landing was finally made where a section of a cliff had toppled from
above, affording a solid footing leading up to the higher bank. We
judged from our maps that we were within a very few miles of the
Colorado River. Here some footprints and signs of an old boat landing,
apparently about a week old, were seen in the sand. This surprised us
somewhat, as we had heard of no one coming down ahead of us.

CHAPTER XII

COULD WE SUCCEED?

An hour or two at the oar