in the altitude of the walls as the falls are passed. In running the channel which divides the twin plateaus, we pass round the first great southern bend. In the very depths of the cañon we have black granite, with a narrow cleft through which a great river plunges. This granite portion of the walls is carved with deep gulches, and embossed with pinnacles and towers. Above are broken, ragged, nonconformable rocks, in many places sloping back at a low angle. Clambering over these, we reach rocks lying in horizontal beds. Some are soft; many very hard; the softer strata are washed out; the harder temain as shelves. Everywhere there are side gulches and cañons, so that these gulches are set about ten thousand dark gloomy alcoves. One might imagine that this was intended for the library of the gods; and it was. The shelves are not for books, but form the stony leaves of one great book. He who would read the language of the universe may dig out letters here and there, and with them spell the words,. and read, in a slow and imperfect way, but still so as to understand a little, the story of creation."-Exploration of the Colorado River of the West: Washington, 1875, pp. 83, 85, 193-4.

3. Running a Rapid.

The dangers of the navigation in rivers, like the Colorado, winding through a series of cañons are naturally often of a very formidable character. The writer just quoted, who ran many risks in his exploration of these regions, had on one occasion to navigate a rapid in the Grand Cañon at the imminent peril of his life. "About eleven o'clock," he writes, "we hear a great roar ahead, and approach it very cautiously. The sound grows louder and louder as we run, and at last we find ourselves above a long, broken fall, with ledges and pinnacles of

rock obstructing the river. There is a descent of perhaps 75 or 80 feet in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves on the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad white foam. We can land just above, but there is no foothold on either side by which we can make a portage. It is nearly 1000 feet to the top of the granite, so it will be impossible to carry our boats around, though we can climb to the summit up a side gulch, and, passing along a mile or two, can descend to the river. This we find on examination, but such a portage would be impracticable for us, and we must run the rapid or abandon the river. There is no hesitation. We step into our boats, push off, and away we go; first on smooth but swift water, then we strike a glassy wave and ride to its top, down again into the trough, up again on a higher wave, and down and up on waves higher and still higher, until we strike one just as it curls back, and a breaker rolls over our little boat. Still, on we speed; shooting past projecting rocks, till the little boat is caught in a whirlpool, and spun round several times. At last we pull out again into the stream, and now the other boats have passed us. The open compartment of the 'Emma Dean' is filled with water, and every breaker rolls over us. Hurled back from a rock -now on this side, now on that—we are carried into an eddy, in which we struggle for a few minutes, and are then out again, the breakers still rolling over us. Our boat is unmanageable, but she cannot sink, and we drift down another hundred yards through breakers-how, we scarcely know. We find the other boats have turned into an eddy at the foot of the fall, and are waiting to catch us as we come, for the men have seen that our boat is swamped. They push pull us in against the wall. we go again" (op. cit. pp. 82-3).

out as we come near, and We bail our boat, and on

The walls of the Grand Cañon and the level of the plateau descend by a succession of great steps, produced by faults, until the level of the river is reached at the mouth of the Grand Wash; and thus ends the Grand Cañon.

Below the Grand Wash, a dry stream bed which enters the Colorado from the north, the river turns south again and enters the Black Cañon of Lieutenant Ives' report-a cañon which would be a remarkable feature were it not brought into such close juxtaposition with that described above.

Below it the river runs in narrow valleys and low cañons to its mouth.

4. Fauna and Flora of the Plateau Region.

This region is not all a desert. The high plateaus must be excepted from the general condemnation, but as these are in the immediate vicinity of the mountains, and are of very limited extent, they can scarcely be considered as belonging to the plateau region. On these the fauna and flora of the mountain region are found in abundance, dependent in large measure upon the elevation. As we go down into the true cañon country, the scene changes. Aspens give place to piñon pine and cedar; the grasses, fruits, and flowers, to sage, cacti, and bare rock; the streams become confined in rocky cañons, turn muddy and warm, and gradually disappear. The game changes, -deer and elk are replaced by the coyote, while rattlesnakes and centipedes assert their proprietorship. Of the fauna Major Powell writes-"Among the buttes on the lower terraces, rattlesnakes crawl, lizards glide over the rocks, tarantulas stagger about, and red ants build their playhouse mountains. Sometimes rabbits are seen, and wolves prowl in their quest; but the desert has no bird of sweet song and no beast of noble mien."

CHAPTER VIII.

THE GREAT BASIN.

1. Its General Appearance.

BETWEEN the Wahsatch Range and the Sierra Nevada lies a great area, which has no outlet to either oceanan area containing many great ranges of mountains, with broad valleys at their bases; but the mountains send down to the plains few permanent streams, and nearly all of these are absorbed by the thirsty soil immediately, or flow into salt lakes, to feed the increasing thirst of the dry atmosphere.

On the east this region is tolerably well defined by the Wahsatch and other ranges, on the west by the Sierra Nevada, On the north and south, however, its limits are not sharply defined, the water-partings being, in most cases, mere swells in otherwise flat valleys.

2. The Wahsatch Range.

On the west side of the basin, separating it in part from the plateau region, is a high and important range, known as the Wahsatch Range. Its extreme summits reach nearly to 13,000 feet, but in the greater part of the range they are from 10,000 to 11,000 feet in height.

The range is traversed by several streams which, heading in its eastern foothills, flow westward, cutting

errific gorges through its centre. Of such are the Provo (formerly known as the Timpanogos), the Weber, Ogden, and several branches of the Bear, a tributary to the Great Salt Lake.

3. The Basin Ranges.

The Basin is traversed by a large number of ranges of mountains, trending nearly parallel to a meridian, but varying slightly from that course to the north-east in the eastern part of the region, and to the north-west in the western part. These ranges are distributed over this area with tolerable regularity. They are mainly simple in structure; some are short, others extend over several degrees of latitude, and are of heights ranging from 5000 to 10,000 feet above sea-level,

Between them are valleys of considerable breadth, floored by the detritus from the mountains, which buries deeply their bases, leaving to the imagination alone to picture the full magnitude of these ranges, of which the summits only appear above the surface.

These ranges are composed of sedimentary rocks, unaltered or metamorphosed; granite and cognate rocks, and volcanic rocks.

Most of these valleys are utter deserts. There is absolutely no water in them from one end of the year to the other. In the spring tiny rills may run down from the little snow in the mountains, but they sink immediately on reaching the plain, and for nearly all the year these even are dry. The only source of supply to the traveller over these arid wastes is from the springs which are found occasionally at the bases of the mountains.

A few of the valleys are watered in part by small streams which flow through them, and, in such cases, the soil is found to be of marvellous fertility.