he chasm
through which the river runs. On my way back I kill two rattlesnakes,
and find on my arrival that another has been killed just at camp.

_August 11.--_We remain at this point to-day for the purpose of
determining the latitude and longitude, measuring the height of the
walls, drying our rations, and repairing our boats.

Captain Powell early in the morning takes a barometer and goes out to
climb a point between the two rivers. I walk down the gorge to the left
at the foot of the cliff, climb to a bench, and discover a trail, deeply
worn in the rock. Where it crosses the side gulches in some places steps
have been cut. I can see no evidence of its having been traveled for a
long time. It was doubtless a path used by the people who inhabited this
country anterior to the present Indian races--the people who built the
communal houses of which mention has been made.

I return to camp about three o'clock and find that some of the men have
discovered ruins and many fragments of pottery; also etchings and
hieroglyphics on the rocks.

We find to-night, on comparing the readings of the barometers, that the
walls are about 3,000 feet high--more than half a mile--an altitude
difficult to appreciate from a mere statement of feet. The slope by
which the ascent is made is not such a slope as is usually found in
climbing a mountain, but one much more abrupt--often vertical for many
hundreds of feet,--so that the impression is given that we are at great
depths, and we look up to see but a little patch of sky.

Between the two streams, above the Colorado Chiquito, in some places the
rocks are broken and shelving for 600 Or 700 feet; then there is a
sloping terrace, which can be climbed only by finding some way up a
gulch; then another terrace, and back, still another cliff. The summit
of the cliff is 3,000 feet above the river, as our barometers attest.

Our camp is below the Colorado Chiquito and on the eastern side of the
canyon.

_August 12.--_The rocks above camp are rust-colored sandstones and
conglomerates. Some are very hard; others quite soft. They all lie
nearly horizontal, and the beds of softer material have been washed out,
leaving the harder forming a series of shelves. Long lines of these are
seen, of varying thickness, from one or two to twenty or thirty feet,
and the spaces between have the same variability. This morning I spend
two or three hours in climbing among these shelves, and then I pass
above them