100 MOJAVE VALLEY TO BIG CANON.—APPEARANCE OF INHABITANTS. 
the sides of the rugged bluffs. The place grew wilder and grander. The sides of the tortuous 
cafion became loftier, and before long we were hemmed in by walls two thousand feet high. 
The scenery much resembled that in the Black cafion, excepting that the rapid descent, the 
increasing magnitude of the collossal piles that blocked the end of the vista, and the corres- 
ponding depth and gloom of the gaping chasms into which we were plunging, imparted an 
unearthly character to a way that might have resembled the portals of the infernal regions. 
Harsh screams issuing from aerial recesses in the cafion sides, and apparitions of goblin-like 
figures perched in the rifts and hollows of the impending cliffs, gave an odd reality to this 
impression. At short distances other avenues of equally magnificent proportions came in from 
one:side or the other; anc no trail being left on the rocky pathway, the idea suggested itself 
that were the guides to desert us our experience might further resemblé that of the dwellers 
in the unblest abodes—in the difficulty of getting out. eae} 
Huts of. the rudest. construction, visible here and there in some sheltered niche or beneath a 
projecting rock, and the sight of a hideous old squaw, staggering under a bundle of fuel, showed 
_ that we'had penetrated into the doniestic retreats of the Hualpais nation, Our party being, 
in all probability, the first company of whites that had ever been seen by them, we had antici- 
pated producing a great effect, and were a little chagrined when the old woman, and two or 
‘three others of both sexes that were met, went by without taking the slightest notice of us. If 
_pack-trains had been in the habit of. passing twenty times a day they could not have manifested 
a beautiful and brilliantly 
hooting from between the 
On either side was an oasis of verdure—young 
speedily formed, and men and mules have had 
Ps 
