cept
by way of the river channels. Macomb and Newberry succeeded in forcing
their way to within about six miles of the junction, there to be
completely baffled and turned back. Arriving finally at the brink of the
canyon of Grand River, Newberry says:

"On every side we were surrounded by columns, pinnacles, and castles
of fantastic shapes, which limited our view, and by impassable canons,
which restricted our movements. South of us, about a mile distant, rose
one of the castle-like buttes, which I have mentioned, and to which,
though with difficulty, we made our way. This butte was composed of
alternate layers of chocolate-colored sandstone and shale about one
thousand feet in height; its sides nearly perpendicular, but most
curiously ornamented with columns and pilasters, porticos and
colonnades, cornices and battlements, flanked here and there with tall
outstanding towers, and crowned with spires so slender that it seemed
as though a breath of air would suffice to topple them from their
foundations. To accomplish the object for which we had come so far, it
seemed necessary that we should ascend this butte. The day was perfectly
clear and intensely hot, the mercury standing at 92 degrees in the
shade, and the red sandstone, out of which the landscape was carved,
glowed in the heat of the burning sunshine. Stripping off nearly all
our clothing, we made the attempt, and, after two hours of most arduous
labor, succeeded in reaching the summit. The view which there burst
upon us was such as amply repaid us for all our toil. It baffles
description."

He goes on to say that, while the great canyon, meaning the Grand
Canyon, with its gigantic cliffs, presents grander scenes, they have
less variety and beauty of detail than this. They were here able to see
over an area of some fifty miles diameter, where, hemmed in by lines of
lofty step-like mesas, a great basin lay before them as on a map. There
was no vegetation, "nothing but bare and barren rocks of rich and
varied colours shimmering in the sunlight. Scattered over the plain were
thousands of the fantastically formed buttes to which I have referred...
pyramids, domes, towers, columns, spires of every conceivable form
and size." There were also multitudes of canyons, ramifying in every
direction, "deep, dark, and ragged, impassable to everything but the
winged bird." At the nearest point was the canyon of the Grand, while
four miles to the south another great gorge was d