32 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



and delicate emerald; and then night fell and 

 darkness shrouded the desert. 



Next morning the horse-wranglers, Nick and 

 Quentin, were off before dawn to bring in the 

 saddle and pack animals; the sun rose in burn- 

 ing glory, and through the breathless heat we 

 drove the pack-train before us toward the 

 crossing of the Colorado. Hour after hour we 

 plodded ahead. The cliff line bent back at an 

 angle, and we followed into the valley of the 

 Colorado. The trail edged in toward the high 

 cliffs as they gradually drew toward the river. 

 At last it followed along the base of the frown- 

 ing rock masses. Far off on our right lay the 

 Colorado; on its opposite side the broad river 

 valley was hemmed in by another line of cliffs, 

 at whose foot we were to travel for two days 

 after crossing the river. 



The landscape had become one of incredible 

 wildness, of tremendous and desolate majesty. 

 No one could paint or describe it save one of 

 the great masters of imaginative art or litera- 

 ture — a Turner or Browning or Poe. The 

 sullen rock walls towered hundreds of feet aloft, 

 with something about their grim savagery that 

 suggested both the terrible and the grotesque. 

 All life was absent, both from them and from 

 the fantastic barrenness of the bowlder-strewn 



