THE EAVINES OF THE KAIBAB. 
131 
ride brings us to an abandoned saw-mill. Here the trail leaves the valley 
which we have followed for ten miles and turns ujj into a large ravine com- 
ing from the east or southeast. It is much narrower than Stewart’s Canon, 
with very abrupt and almost precipitous walls about 600 feet high. The 
traveler in the Plateau Province learns to dread the necessity which compels 
him to thread a deep gorge or canon unless he knows beforehand that there 
is a practicable and easy trail through it. If it is dry it is almost certain 
to be obstructed by fallen fragments and thickly set with scrub, its bottom 
scoured into rough gullies by the sudden floods ; and half the time it will 
be necessary to mount the steep talus and thread it. If it carries a living 
stream the way is still worse, for, in addition to the foregoing difficulties, 
there are dangerous quicksands, impenetrable thickets of willows and thorny 
bushes, and the stream meanders from wall to wall. Unless there is a good 
trail the traveler will usually prefer to mount the cliff, if a break can be 
found in it, and seek the mesa above, and thus by a single struggle get rid 
of the miseries below. Not so the ravines of the Kaibab. Like the paths 
trodden by the pilgrims in the Delectable Mountains, “their ways are 
pleasantness and all their paths are peace.” The ravine we enter is but a 
fair specimen of a vast number of them which cover the whole broad sur- 
face of the plateau with an infinite network of ramifications. Its bottom 
is covered with a carpet of grass and flowers growing rankly in a smooth 
firm soil free from rocks and undergrowth. Here and there a clump of 
aspens or noble pines grow in the way, but offer no obstacles to progress. 
It is like riding through a well-kept park or an avenue shaded by ancient 
trees. And now the effect of the absence of streams becomes manifest. 
Not only are there no perennial brooks, but there are no indications that 
even in the time of heavy rains or melting snow any notable amount of 
water ever runs in these channels. Yet the Kaibab is a moist region. In 
summer the rains are frequent and in winter the snow lies deep. Horses 
cannot winter there, and the wild cattle and deer, late in October, abandon 
it and seek the lower regions around its flanks. In all other plateaus or 
mountain ranges of equal mass and altitude and with equal precipitation 
there are many goodly streams, and even large creeks, fed throughout the 
summer by numberless copious springs; and when the snows melt these 
