STEEP TRAILS 



topa, Uncompahgre, Eagle, and Roaring 

 Rivers, the Green and the Grand, and scores 

 of others with branches innumerable, as mad 

 and glad a band as ever sang on mountains, 

 descending in glory of foam and spray from 

 snow-banks and glaciers through their rocky 

 moraine-dammed, beaver-dammed channels. 

 Then, all emerging from dark balsam and pine 

 woods and coming together, they meander 

 through wide, sunny park valleys, and at 

 length enter the great plateau and flow in 

 deep canons, the beginning of the system 

 culminating in this grand canon of canons. 



Our warm canon camp is also a good place 

 to give a thought to the glaciers which still 

 exist at the heads of the highest tributaries. 

 Some of them are of considerable size, espe 

 cially those on the Wind River and Sawatch 

 ranges in Wyoming and Colorado. They are 

 remnants of a vast system of glaciers which 

 recently covered the upper part of the Colo 

 rado basin, sculptured its peaks, ridges, and 

 valleys to their present forms, and extended 

 far out over the plateau region how far I 

 cannot now say. It appears, therefore, that, 

 however old the main trunk of the Colorado 

 may be, all its widespread upper branches 

 and the landscapes they flow through are 

 new-born, scarce at all changed as yet hi any 



378 



