366 Eevietrs — PotvelVs Exploration of the Colorado. 



the author writes with a detailed and extensive knowledge of this 

 peculiar region, which claims attention — a region the very name of 

 which prepares one for something of the marvellous. Hence we are 

 not surprised to find, though the author has not all the descriptive 

 power of a Burton, that his history bears much the character of the 

 thrilling narrative of a desperate involuntary voyage through the 

 canons of the same river (which will be found in " New Tracks in 

 North America ") ; accompanied too by the same accessories of 

 danger, including loss of life ; far three of the author's assistants, 

 after electing to leave their companions, and strike across the country, 

 rather than face further obstacles and risks of the caiion rapids 

 ahead, are stated to- have fallen into the hands of Indians, and been 

 murdered by their arrows. 



The whole length of the Colorado, with the Green River, of which 

 it is the continuation, is about two thousand miles, while the country 

 drained by the Colorada itself is some eight hundred miles in 

 length, by three to five hundred in width, containing some three 

 hundred thousand square miles. The lower third of this basin of 

 the Colorado is but little above the sea-level, though mountains rise 

 here and there from two to six thousand feet. And it is bounded on 

 the north by bold, often vertical, cliffs. The upper two-thirds of the 

 basin is from four to eight thousand feet above the sea, surrounded 

 by ranges of snow-clad mountains, having altitudes of eight to 

 fourteen thousand feet. " All winter long on its mountain-crested 

 rim, snow falls filling the gorges, half burying the forests, and 

 covering the crags and peaks with a mantle woven by the winds 

 from the waves of the sea — a mantle of snow. When the summer 

 sun comes, this snow melts and tumbles down the mountain-sides in 

 millions of cascades. Ten million cascade brooks unite to form ten 

 thousand torrent creeks ; ten thousand torrent creeks unite to form 

 a hundred rivers beset with cataracts ; a hundred roaring rivers unite 

 to form the Colorado, which rolls," through its canons, "a mad, 

 turbid stream, into the Gulf of California." 



Where one of these streams traverses arid plains, it excavates its 

 bed faster than the general level of the country is reduced by 

 meteoric abrasion, and so " cuts deeper and still deeper till its banks 

 are towering cliffs of solid rock," forming a gorge which is called a 

 caiion. " For more than a thousand miles along its course the 

 Colorado has cut for itself such a caiion, broken at some few points, 

 where lateral streams join it. Every river entering the main one, 

 every lateral creek, every brook, runs in a caiion ; every rill born of 

 a shower, and born again of a shower, and living only during these 

 showers, has cut for itself a canon ; so that the whole upper basin of 

 the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these deep gorges." Some 

 of these caiions are not more than twenty or thirt}^ feet in width, 

 and from six hundred to fifteen hundred feet deep. Others still 

 comparatively narrow have a depth of more than an English mile. 

 At one the author was baffled from day to day till the fourth had 

 nearly passed before he could find a way down to the river. " Low 

 mesas dry and treeless stretch back from the brink of a caon, 



