48 A PICTURESQUE VALLEY. 
After three or four days of weary travel 
over this level plain, the picturesque valley of 
the Canadian burst once more upon our view, 
presenting one of the most magnificent sights 
I had ever beheld. Here rose a perpendicu- 
lar cliff, in all the majesty and sublimity of its 
desolation ;—there another sprang forward as 
in the very act of losing its balance and about 
to precipitate itself upon the vale below. A 
little further on a pillar with crevices and cor- 
nices so curiously formed as easily to be mis- 
_ taken for the ee of art; while a thousand 
- other objects tesquely and fantastically 
arranged, and all shaded in the sky-boun 
perspective by the blue ridge-like brow of 
the mesa far beyond the Canadian, consti- 
tuted a kind of chaotic space where nature 
seemed to have indulged in her wildest ca- 
e _ Such was the confusion of ground- 
ind eccentric cavities, that it was alto- 
gather impossible to determine whereabouts 
the channel of the Canadian wound its way 
among them. 
It would seem that these mesas might once 
have extended up to the margin of the stream, 
leaving a cajion or chasm through which the 
river flowed, as is still the case in some other 
places. But the basis of the plain not hav- 
ing been sufficiently firm to resist the action 
Brg the waters, these have washed and cut the 
rdering cejas or brows into all the shapes 
they now present. The buffalo’ and other 
animals have no doubt assisted i in these trans- 
mutations. Their deep-worn paths 
