and go up a long slope to the foot of the cliff and try to
discover some way by which I can reach the top of the wall; but I find
my progress cut off by an amphitheater. Then I wander away around to the
left, up a little gulch and along benches, climbing from time to time,
until I reach an altitude of nearly 2,000 feet and can get no higher.
From this point I can look off to the west, up side canyons of the
Colorado, and see the edge of a great plateau, from which streams run
down into the Colorado, and deep gulches in the escarpment which faces
us, continued by canyons, ragged and flaring and set with cliffs and
towering crags, down to the river. I can see far up Marble Canyon to
long lines of chocolate-colored cliffs, and above these the Vermilion
Cliffs. I can see, also, up the Colorado Chiquito, through a very ragged
and broken canyon, with sharp salients set out from the walls on either
side, their points overlapping, so that a huge tooth of marble on one
side seems to be set between two teeth on the opposite; and I can also
get glimpses of walls standing away back from the river, while over my
head are mural escarpments not possible to be scaled.

Cataract Canyon is 41 miles long. The walls are 1,300 feet high at its
head, and they gradually increase in altitude to a point about halfway
down, where they are 2,700 feet, and then decrease to 1,300 feet at the
foot. Narrow Canyon is 9 1/2 miles long, with walls 1,300 feet in height
at the head and coming down to the water at the foot.

There is very little vegetation in this canyon or in the adjacent
country. Just at the junction of the Grand and Green there are a number
of hackberry trees; and along the entire length of Cataract Canyon the
high-water line is marked by scattered trees of the same species. A few
nut pines and cedars are found, and occasionally a redbud or Judas tree;
but the general aspect of the canyons and of the adjacent country is
that of naked rock.

The distance through Glen Canyon is 149 miles. Its walls vary in height
from 200 or 300 to 1,600 feet. Marble Canyon is 65 1/2 miles long. At
its head it is 200 feet deep, and it steadily increases in depth to its
foot, where its walls are 3,500 feet high.

CHAPTER XI.

FROM THE LITTLE COLORADO TO THE FOOT OF THE GRAND CANYON.

_August 13_.--We are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown.
Our boats, tied to a common, stake, chafe each other as they are tossed
by the fretfu