point where the wall is again broken
down. Up we climb. On the right there is a narrow, mural point
of rocks, extending toward the river, 200 or 300 feet high and 600 or
800 feet long. We come back to where this sets in and find it cut off
from the main wall by a great crevice. Into this we pass; and now a
long, narrow rock is between us and the river. The rock itself is split
longitudinally and transversely; and the rains on the surface above have
run down through the crevices and gathered into channels below and then
run off into the river. The crevices are usually narrow above and, by
erosion of the streams, wider below, forming a network of "caves", each
cave having a narrow, winding skylight up through the rocks. We wander
among these corridors for an hour or two, but find no place where the
rocks are broken down so that we can climb up. At last we determine to
attempt a passage by a crevice, and select one which we think is wide
enough to admit of the passage of our bodies and yet narrow enough to
climb out by pressing our hands and feet against the walls. So we climb
as men would out of a well. Bradley climbs first; I hand him the
barometer, then climb over his head and he hands me the barometer. So we
pass each other alternately until we emerge from the fissure, out on the
summit of the rock. And what a world of grandeur is spread before us!
Below is the canyon through which the Colorado runs. We can trace its
course for miles, and at points catch glimpses of the river. From the
northwest comes the Green in a narrow winding gorge. From the northeast
comes the Grand, through a canyon that seems bottomless from where we
stand. Away to the west are lines of cliffs and ledges of rock--not such
ledges as the reader may have seen where the quarryman splits his
blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry mountains that,
rolled out on the plain below, would stand a lofty range; and not such
cliffs as the reader may have seen where the swallow builds its nest,
but cliffs where the soaring eagle is lost to view ere he reaches the
summit. Between us and the distant cliffs are the strangely carved and
pinnacled rocks of the _Toom'pin wunear' Tuweap'._ On the summit of the
opposite wall of the canyon are rock forms that we do not understand.
Away to the east a group of eruptive mountains are seen--the Sierra La
Sal, which we first saw two days ago through the canyon of the Grand.
Their slopes are covered with pines, an