y-four miles long. The
walls were never less than two thousand feet high except near the foot.
They are very irregular, standing in perpendicular or overhanging cliffs
here, terraced there, or receding in steep slopes broken by many
side-gulches. The highest point of the wall is twenty-seven hundred
feet, but the peaks a little distance off are a thousand feet higher.
Yellow pines, nut pines, firs and cedars stand in dense forests on the
Uintah Mountains, and clinging to moving rocks they have come down the
walls to the water's edge between Flaming Gorge and Echo Park. The red
sandstones are lichened over, delicate mosses grow in the moist places
and ferns festoon the walls.

[Illustration: HORSESHOE CANON.]

A few days later they were upset again, losing oars, guns and
barometers, and on July 18th they had only enough provisions left for
two months, though they had supplied themselves with quantities which,
barring accidents, should have lasted ten months. On July 19th the Grand
Canon of the Colorado became visible, and from an eminence they could
follow its course for miles and catch glimpses of the river. The Green,
down which they had come so far, bears in from the north-west through a
narrow, winding gorge. The Grand comes in from the north-east through a
channel which from the explorer's point of view seems bottomless. Away
to the west are lines of cliffs and ledges of rock, with grotesque forms
intervening. In the east a chain of eruptive mountains is visible, the
slopes covered with pines, the summits coated with snow and the gulches
flanked by great crags. Wherever the men looked there were rocks, deep
gorges in which the rivers were lost under cliffs, towers and pinnacles,
thousands of strangely-carved forms, and mountains blending with the
clouds. They passed the junction of the Grand and Green, and on July
21st they were on the Colorado itself. The walls are nearly vertical,
and the river is broad and swift, but free from rocks and falls. From
the edge of the water to the brink of the cliffs is nearly two thousand
feet, and the cliffs are reflected on the quiet surface until it seems
to the travellers that there is a vast abyss below them. But the
tranquillity is not lasting: a little way below this space of majestic
calm it was necessary to make three portages in succession, the distance
being less than three-quarters of a mile, with a fall of seventy-five
feet. In the evening Major Powell sat upon a rock