sed, but our barometers are
all so much injured as to be useless, and so we have lost our reckoning
in altitude, and know not how much descent the river has yet to make.
The stream is still wild and rapid and rolls through a narrow channel.
We make but slow progress, often landing against a wall and climbing
around some point to see the river below. Although very anxious to
advance, we are determined to run with great caution, lest by another
accident we lose our remaining supplies. How precious that little flour
has become! We divide it among the boats and carefully store it away, so
that it can be lost only by the loss of the boat itself.

We make ten miles and a half, and camp among the rocks on the right. We
have had rain from time to time all day, and have been thoroughly
drenched and chilled; but between showers the sun shines with great
power and the mercury in our thermometers stands at 115 degrees, so that
we have rapid changes from great extremes, which are very disagreeable.
It is especially cold in the rain to-night. The little canvas we have is
rotten and useless; the rubber _ponchos_ with which we started from
Green River City have all been lost; more than half the party are
without hats, not one of us has an entire suit of clothes, and we have
not a blanket apiece. So we gather driftwood and build a fire; but after
supper the rain, coming down in torrents, extinguishes it, and we sit up
all night on the rocks, shivering, and are more exhausted by the night's
discomfort than by the day's toil.

_August 18._--The day is employed in making portages and we advance but
two miles on our journey. Still it rains.

While the men are at work making portages I climb up the granite to its
summit and go away back over the rust-colored sandstones and
greenish-yellow shales to the foot of the marble wall. I climb so high
that the men and boats are lost in the black depths below and the
dashing river is a rippling brook, and still there is more canyon above
than below. All about me are interesting geologic records. The book is
open and I can read as I run. All about me are grand views, too, for the
clouds are playing again in the gorges. But somehow I think of the nine
days' rations and the bad river, and the lesson of the rocks and the
glory of the scene are but half conceived. I push on to an angle, where
I hope to get a view of the country beyond, to see if possible what the
prospect may be of our soon running throu