58 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
feet long. We come back to where this sets in, and find it cut off from the 
main wall by a great crevice. Into this we pass. And now, a long, narrow 
rock is between us and the river. The rock itself is split longitudinally and 
transversely; and the rains on the surface above have run down through the 
crevices, and gathered into channels below, and then run off into the river. 
The crevices are usually narrow above, and, by erosion of the streams, 
wider below, forming a net work of caves ; but each cave having a narrow, 
winding sky -light up through the rocks. We wander among these corridors 
for an hour or two, but find no place where the rocks are broken down, so 
that we can climb up. At last, we determine to attempt a passage by a 
crevice, and select one which we think is wide enough to admit of the pas 
sage of our bodies, and yet narrow enough to climb out by pressing our 
hands and feet against the walls. So we climb as men would out of a well. 
Bradley climbs first; I hand him the barometer, then climb over his head, 
and he hands me the barometer. So we pass each other alternately, until we 
emerge from the fissure, out on the summit of the rock. And what a world 
of grandeur is spread before us ! Below is the canon, through which the 
Colorado runs. We can trace its course for miles, and at points catch 
glimpses of the river. From the northwest comes the Green, in a narrow, 
winding gorge. From the northeast comes the Grand, through a canon that 
seems bottomless from where we stand. Away to the west are lines of cliffs 
and ledges of rock not such ledges as you may have seen where the quarry- 
man splits his blocks, but ledges from which the gods might quarry mount 
ains, that, rolled out on the plain below, would stand a lofty range ; and not 
such cliffs as you may have seen where the swallow builds its nest, but cliffs 
where the soaring eagle is lost to view ere he reaches the summit. Between 
us and the distant cliffs are the strangely carved and pinnacled rocks of the 
Toom'-pin wu-near' Tu-weap', On the summit of the opposite wall of the 
canon are rock forms that we do not understand. Away to the east a group 
of eruptive mountains are seen the Sierra La Sal. Their slopes are 
covered with pines, and deep gulches are flanked with great crags, and 
snow fields are seen near the summits. So the mountains are in uniform, 
green, gray, arid silver. Wherever we look there is but a wilderness of 
rocks; deep gorges, where the rivers are lost below cliffs and towers and 
