DENVER & RIO GRANDE WESTERN ROUTE. 205 
A few hundred feet west of the station at Greenriver the railroad 
has cut through the dark shale at the base of the Mancos formation. 
If the traveler could have the opportunity of leaving the railroad 
coach and of walking through this small cut he would find that almost 
every fragment of shale is covered with impressions of shells. Ex- 
perts who have studied these shells say that at one time each was 
inhabited by an animal that lived in the sea and that when the animal 
died the shell was filled with the dark mud that has since been consoli- 
dated into shale. The form and all the delicate markings of these 
shells have been well preserved. The general distribution of this 
shale in New Mexico, northeastern Arizona, eastern Utah, Colorado, 
Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota shows that the 
sea in which it was deposited must have been of great extent and that 
the Rocky Mountains of to-day could not then have been in existence. 
Geologic evidence over all the world shows that its surface has been 
continually changing. At one time a region may be covered with 
Meyr at another time it may have been a plain much like that which 
the traveler crossed east of Denver; and at still another time it may 
have been high land, with aaibhindaitie Such a succession of changes 
has been repeated many times, with infinite variations, through all 
the ages, and the present age is no exception. but is also a scene of 
general change or transformation. Such a transformation is going 
on to-day as in the past, but we are scarcely aware of it, for it is so 
intervene between that beautiful land, 
the balmy region in the great west, 
and a the desert home of the poor 
Nu-ma 
se This trail was the canyon gorge of 
the Colorado. Through it he led him, 
that land lest, through discontent with 
the cireumstances of this world, they 
Should desire to go to heaven. Then 
he rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, 
raging stream that should engulf any- 
so that might attempt to enter there- 
y. 
“ More than once have I been warned 
by the Indians not to enter this can- 
yon, They considered it disobedience 
to the gods and contempt for their au- 
thority and believed that it would 
Surely bring upon me wrath.” 
of tie hs Indians described to 
Powell the fate of some members of his 
tribe who attempted to run one of the 
canyons of Green rigged in the follow- 
ing graphic manner 
“*The rocks,’ hes said, holding his 
hands above his head, his arms ver- 
tical, and looking between them to the 
heavens, ‘the rocks h-e-a-p, h-e-a-p 
high; the water go h-oo-woogh, h-0o- 
wough; water pony [boat] h-e-a-p 
buck; water catch ’em; no see ’em 
Injun any more! no see ’em squaw any 
more! no see ’em papoose any more!’ ” 
ite these admonitions Powell 
made preparations to undertake the 
descent of the canyons, and on May 24, 
1869, he floated away from the fron- 
tier settlement of Green River, Wyo, 
with a party of ten men in four boats. 
One of the boats was wrecked in the 
canyon of Lodore, where the river cuts 
through the great mass of the Uinta 
Mountains, but none of the party was 
lost. The expedition passed what was 
then called Gunnison’s Crossing, now 
