78 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
side gulches, in some places, steps have been cut. I can see no evidence 
of its having been traveled for a long time. It was doubtless a path used 
by the people who inhabited this country anterior to the present Indian 
races the people who built the communal houses, of which mention has 
been made. 
I return to camp about three o'clock, and find that some of the men 
have discovered ruins, and many fragments of pottery; also, etchings and 
hieroglyphics on the rocks. 
We find, to night, on comparing the readings of the barometers, that 
the walls are about three thousand feet high more than half a mile an 
altitude difficult to appreciate from a mere statement of feet. The ascent 
is made, not by a slope such as is usually found in climbing a mountain, 
but is much more abrupt often vertical for many hundreds of feet so 
that the impression is that we are at great depths ; and we look up to see 
but a little patch of sky. 
Between the two streams, above the Colorado Chiquito, in some places 
the rocks are broken and shelving for six or seven hundred feet ; then there 
is a sloping terrace, which can only be climbed by finding some way up a 
gulch ; then, another terrace, and back, still another cliff. The summit of 
the cliff is three thousand feet above the river, as our barometers attest 
Our camp is below the Colorado Chiquito, and on the eastern side of 
the canon. 
August 12. The rocks above camp are rust colored sandstones and 
conglomerates. Some .are very hard ; others quite soft. These all lie 
nearly horizontal, and the beds of softer material have been washed out, 
and left the harder, thus forming a series of shelves. Long lines of these 
are seen, of varying thickness, from one or two to twenty or thirty feet, 
and the spaces between have the same variability. This morning, I spend 
two or three hours in climbing among these shelves, and then I pass above 
them, and go up a long slope, to the foot of the cliff, and try to discover 
some way by which I can reach the top of the wall ; but I find my progress 
cut off by an amphitheater. Then, I wander away around to the left, up a 
little gulch, and along benches, and climb, from time to time, until I reach 
an altitude of nearly two thousand feet, and can get no higher. From this 
