ch injured
as to be useless, so we have lost our reckoning in altitude, and know
not how much descent the river has yet to make.

The stream is still wild and rapid, and rolls through a narrow channel.
We make but slow progress, often landing against a wall, and climbing
around some point, where we can see the river below. Although very
anxious to advance, we are determined to run with great caution, lest,
by another accident, we lose all our supplies. How precious that little
flour has become! We divide it among the boats, and carefully store it
away, so that it can be lost only by the loss of the boat itself.

We make ten miles and a half, and camp among the rocks on the right. We
have had rain, from time to time, all day, and have been thoroughly
drenched and chilled; but between showers the sun shines with great
power, and the mercury in our thermometers stands at 115 deg., so that we
have rapid changes from great extremes, which are very disagreeable. It
is especially cold in the rain to-night. The little canvas we have is
rotten and useless; the rubber ponchos, with which we started from Green
River City, have all been lost; more than half the party is without
hats, and not one of us has an entire suit of clothes, and we have not a
blanket apiece. So we gather driftwood, and build a fire; but after
supper the rain, coming down in torrents, extinguishes it, and we sit up
all night on the rocks, shivering, and are more exhausted by the night's
discomfort than by the day's toil.

_August 18._ The day is employed in making portages, and we advance but
two miles on our journey. Still it rains.

While the men are at work making portages, I climb up the granite to its
summit, and go away back over the rust-coloured sandstones and
greenish-yellow shales to the foot of the marble wall. I climb so high
that the men and boats are lost in the black depths below, and the
dashing river is a rippling brook; and still there is more canon above
than below. All about me are interesting geological records. The book is
open, and I can read as I run. All about me are grand views, for the
clouds are playing again in the gorges. But somehow I think of the nine
days' rations, and the bad river, and the lesson of the rocks, and the
glory of the scene is but half seen.

I push on to an angle, where I hope to get a view of the country beyond,
to see, if possible, what the prospect may be of our soon running
through this plateau, or, at