84 NARRATIVE AND ITINERARY — MPTO-LY-AS CANON. 



As we were about to start, a horse, becoming entangled in the cords of the office tent, threw 

 jt down and broke the barometer. I sent the rest of the party forward, and Mr. Anderson and 

 Dr. Sterling remained with me to repair it. As this detained us about two hours, we were 

 compelled to travel rapidly to overtake the train, already considerably in advance. Our course 

 lay through a thick pine and fir forest. The land gradually descended for about ten miles, 

 when we reached a fine open prairie, half a mile wide, lying at the foot of the black conical 

 butte, which Lieut. Williamson had selected as a connecting point for our surveys. A little 

 stream, called by the Indians Que-y-ee, trickled through the prairie, and then disappeared in a 

 small meadow to the eastward. Fine bunch grass was very abundant in this vicinity, and it 

 would have been an excellent camping place. After passing down the stream about a mile we 

 left it, and, again entering the thick forest, followed for about nine miles the western base of a 

 ridge east of the black butte. It conducted us to the dry bed of a stream. We afterwards found 

 a little water, about two hundred yards below the place where the trail left this bed. About 

 three miles from this point we suddenly found ourselves upon the edge of a ravine, then dry, 

 but doubtless, in the rainy season, the bed of a mountain torrent. The banks were about 300 

 feet high and very steep. It was about two miles wide, and in places thickly timbered. We 

 crossed it, and climbing uj) the other side soon beheld a prospect whose wild beauty I have 

 seldom seen equalled. The sun was just setting behind the snowy peaks on our left ; before us 

 lay an immense caiion, the sides of which were rough with basalt, and heavily timbered with 

 pine and fir. In the dim twilight, which had already settled in its bottom, we could occa- 

 sionally see, between the trees, the waters of a large river, called by the Indians Mpto-ly-as. 

 But we had no time to admire the scenery, for the train was still an unknown distance in 

 advance. We hurried our mules as fast as possible down the rocky side of the canon, which, 

 by actual measurement, was subsequently found to be 1,200 feet deep. It soon became dark, 

 and we were beginning to anticipate the pleasures of spending the night without food or 

 blankets, when a sudden bend in the trail revealed the cheerful light of the camp fires 

 shining before us on the river bank. 



September 7. — We were encamped in a narrow part of the caiion, and as its steep sides were 

 crowned by vertical walls of columnar basalt, it would have been impossible for a pack mule to 

 get out of it, in most places. There was but little grass near camp. As a plain although 

 very bad Indian trail led out of the caiion on the south side, we followed it for about three miles, 

 hoping that it might lead to a better ford ; but finding that it turned to the south, we returned 

 to our camp ; crossed the river, which is a rushing torrent that swept away and nearly drowned 

 one of the mules ; and then followed down the caiion, trying to find a place where we could 

 ascend its northern side. This river caiion is very remarkable. Its sides vary from 800 to 

 2,000 feet in height. The river has cut down its bed to this immense depth through successive 

 strata of basalt, with occasionally a deposit of infusorial marl and volcanic tufa, which has 

 sometimes hardened into a kind of conglomerate sandstone, ten or twenty feet in thickness, and 

 of a white, gray, or reddish color. Often, as the banks have gradually receded, a slender 

 column of this deposit, capped by a huge piece of basalt protecting it from the weather, has been 

 left projecting high above the mass of detritus around it, its sides washed smooth and often 

 worn into fanciful forms by the rains of ages. It required but little imagination to see, in these 

 light colored figures, giants and monsters guarding the dark, frowning sides of the caiion. The 

 entire absence of all signs of life, the dull sound of the river rushing over its rocky bed, and 

 the dark green of the stunted cedars and pines, clinging to the precipices which confined it, 



