use of "all-fours;" but with
patience and discretion the ultimate peak is conquered without
rope-ladder or ice-axe, and the vastness of the world below, gray and
cold at some hours, and at others lighted with a splendor which words
cannot transcribe, is revealed to the adventurer as satisfaction for his
toil.

But, though what may be called the pure mountain-peaks do not entail the
same perils and difficulties as the members of the Alpine Club discover
in Italy, France, Switzerland and Germany, the volcanic cones and
canon-walls of the West have an unstable verticality which, when it is
not absolutely insurmountable, is more difficult than the top of the
Matterhorn itself; and though the various expeditions under Wheeler,
Powell, King and Hayden have not had Aiguilles Vertes to oppose them,
they have been confronted by obstacles which could only be overcome by
as much courage as certain of the clubmen have required in their most
celebrated exploits. Indeed, nothing in the journals of the Alpine Club
compares in the interest of the narrative or the peril of the
undertaking with Major Powell's exploration of the canons of the
Colorado, which, though its history has become familiar to many readers
through the official report, gathers significance in contrast with all
other Western expeditions, and stands out as an achievement of
extraordinary daring.

The Colorado is formed by the junction of the Grand and Green Rivers.
The Grand has its source in the Rocky Mountains five or six miles west
of Long's Peak, and the Green heads in the Wind River Mountains near
Fremont's Peak. Uniting in the Colorado, they end as turbid floods in
the Gulf of California, a goal which they reach through gorges set deep
in the bosom of the earth and bordered by a region where the mutations
of Nature are in visible process. In all the world there is no other
river like this. The phenomenal in form predominates: the water has
grooved a channel for itself over a mile below the surrounding country,
which is a desert uninhabited and uninhabitable, terraced with long
series of cliffs or _mesa_-fronts, verdureless, voiceless and
unbeautiful. It is a land of soft, crumbling soil and parched rock, dyed
with strange colors and broken into fantastic shapes. Nature is titanic
and mad: the sane and alleviating beauty of fertility is displaced by an
arid and inanimate desolateness, which glows with alien splendor in
evanescent conditions of the atmosphere, b