CANONS. 5 
every lateral creek has cut a canon ; 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 Gut for itself a canon; so that the whole upper portion of the 
basin of the Colorado is traversed by a labyrinth of these deep gorges. 
Owing to a great variety of^ geological conditions, these canons differ 
much in general aspect. The Rio Virgen, between Long Valley and the 
Mormon town of Schunesburgh, runs through Pa-ru'-nu-weap Caiion, often not 
more than twenty or thirty feet in width, and from six hundred to one thou 
sand five hundred feet deep. 
Away to the north, the Yampa empties into the Green by a canon that 
I essayed to cross in the fall of 1868, and was baffled from day to day until 
the fourth had nearly passed before I could find my way down to the river. 
But thirty miles above its mouth, this canon ends, and a narrow valley, with 
a flood- plain, is found. Still farther up the stream, the river comes down 
through another canon, and beyond that a narrow valley is found, and its 
upper course is now through a canon and now a valley. 
All these canons are alike changeable in their topographic character 
istics. 
The longest canon through which the Colorado runs is that between the 
mouth of the Colorado Chiquito and the Grand Wash, a distance of two 
hundred and seventeen and a half miles. But this is separated from another 
above, sixty-five and a half miles in length, only by the narrow canon-valley 
of the Colorado Chiquito. 
All the scenic features of this canon- land are on a giant scale, strange 
and weird. The streams run at depths almost inaccessible ; lashing the rocks 
which beset their channels ; rolling in rapids, and plunging in falls, and mak 
ing a wild music which but adds to the gloom of the solitude. 
The little valleys nestling along the streams are diversified by border 
ing willowy, clumps of box-elder, and small groves of cottonwood. 
Low mesas, c*ry and treeless, stretch back from the brink of the canon, 
often showing smooth surfaces of naked, solid rock. In some places, the 
country rock being composed of marls, the surface is a bed of loose, disinte 
grated material, and you walk through it as in a bed of ashes. Often these 
marls are richly colored and variegated. In other places, the country rock 
