10 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
higher and the depths deeper by the glamour and witchery of light and 
shade. 
Away to the south, the Uinta Mountains stretch in a long line ; high 
peaks thrust into the sky, and snow-fields glittering like lakes of molten 
silver; and pine-forests in somber green; and rosy clouds playing around 
the borders of huge, black masses; and heights and clouds, and mountains 
and snow-fields, and forests and rock-lands, are blended into one grand view. 
Now the sun goes down, and I return to camp. 
May 25. We start early this morning, and run along at a good rate 
until about nine o'clock, when we are brought up on a gravelly bar. All 
jump out, and help the boats over by main strength. Then a rain comes on, 
and river and clouds conspire to give us a thorough drenching. Wet, chilled, 
and tired to exhaustion, we stop at a cottonwood grove on the bank, build a 
huge fire, make a cup of coffee, and are soon refreshed and quite merry. 
When the clouds "get out of our sunshine," we start again. A few miles 
farther down, a flock of mountain-sheep are seen on a cliff to the right. The 
boats are quietly tied up, and three or four men go after them. In the 
course of two or three hours, they return. The cook has been successful in 
bringing down a fat lamb. The unsuccessful hunters taunt him with finding 
it dead; but it is soon dressed, cooked, and eaten, making a fine four o'clock 
dinner. 
"All aboard," and down the river for another dozen miles. On the way, 
we pass the mouth of Black's Fork, a dirty little stream that seems some 
what swollen. Just below its mouth, we land and camp. 
May 26. To-day, we pass several curiously-shaped buttes, standing 
between the west bank of the river and the high bluffs beyond. These 
buttes are outliers of the same beds of rocks exposed on the faces of the 
bluffs ; thinly laminated shales and sandstones of many colors, standing 
above in vertical cliffs, and buttressed below with a water-carved talus ; some 
of them attain an altitude of nearly a thousand feet above the level of the 
river. 
We glide quietly down the placid stream past the carved cliffs of the 
mauvaises terres, now and then obtaining glimpses of distant mountains. 
