ages
was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that
sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a
dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across
the shining spaces.

Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the
rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the
slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a
mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded
ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous
sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta
of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch
of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was
green only at a distance.

Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose
and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk
on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself.
Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to
silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode
the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead
again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.

It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw pinon patches under
the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were
already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to
their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners
of cliff.

I rode round the corner into a widening space thick with cedars. It
ended in a bare slope of smooth rock. Here we dismounted to begin the
ascent. It was smooth and hard, though not slippery. There was not
a crack. I did not see a broken piece of stone. Nas ta Bega and
Wetherill climbed straight up for a while and then wound round a
swell, to turn this way and that, always going up. I began to see
similar mounds of rock all around me, of every shape that could be
called a curve. There were yellow domes far above and small red domes
far below. Ridges ran from one hill of rock to another. There were
no abrupt breaks, but holes and pits and caves were everywhere, and
occasionally deep down, an amphitheater green with cedar and pinon. We
found no vestige of trail on those bare slopes.

Our guides led to the top of the wall, only to disclose to us another
wall beyo