r two thousand
miles long, reaches from near our northern to beyond our southern
border, and drains three hundred thousand square miles of the west side
of the Rocky Mountains. Great as it remains, it is a mere thread to
what it once was. It is easy to see that there were several epochs of
work. Suppose the first one took off the upper limestone rock to the
depth of several thousand feet. This cutting is of various widths.
Just here it is eighteen miles wide; but as such rocks are of varying
hardness there are many promontories that distinctly project out, say,
half a mile from the general rim line, and rising in the center are
various Catskill and Holyoke mountains, with defiantly perpendicular
sides, that persisted in resisting the mighty rush of waters. The
outer portions of their foundations were cut away by the mighty flood
and, as the ages went by, occasionally the sides thundered into the
chasm, leaving the wall positively perpendicular.

We may now suppose the ocean waters nearly exhausted and only the
mighty rivers that had made that ocean were left to flow; indeed, the
rising Sierras of some range unknown at the present may have shut off
whole oceans of rain. The rivers that remained began to cut a much
narrower channel into the softer sand and clay-rock below. From the
great mountain-rimmed plateau rivers poured in at the sides, cutting
lateral canons down to the central flow. Between these stand the
little Holyokes aforesaid, with greatly narrowed base.

I go down with most reverent awe and pick the little ripple-rain-marked
leaf out of its place in the book of nature, a veritable table of stone
written by the finger of God, and bring it up and lay it alongside of
one formed, eons after, at the top. They be brothers both, formed by
the same forces and for the same end.

Standing by this stupendous work of nature day after day, I try to
stretch my mind to some large computation of the work done. A whole
day is taken to go down the gorge to the river. It takes seven miles
of zigzag trail, sometimes frightfully steep, along shelves not over
two feet wide, under rock thousands of feet above and going down
thousands of feet below, to get down that perpendicular mile. It was
an immense day's work.

The day was full of perceptions of the grandeur of vast rock masses
never before suggested, except by the mighty mass of the Matterhorn
seen close by from its Hoernli shoulder.

There was the river--a