TWENTY-TWO MILES. 93 
rocks. Still going up, I find the canon narrowing very much, being but 
fifteen or twenty feet wide ; yet the walls rise on either side many hundreds 
of feet, perhaps thousands; I can hardly tell. 
In some places the stream has not excavated its channel down verti 
cally through the rocks, but has cut obliquely, so that one wall overhangs 
the other. In other places it is cut vertically above and obliquely below, 
or obliquely above and vertically below, so that it is impossible to see out 
overhead. But I can go no farther. The time which I estimated it would 
take to make the portage has almost expired, and I start back on a round trot, 
wading in. the creek where I must, and plunging through basins, and find 
the men waiting for me, and away we go on the river. 
Just after dinner we pass a stream on the right, which leaps into the 
Colorado by a direct fall of more than a hundred feet, forming a beautiful 
cascade. There is a bed of very hard rock above, thirty or forty feet in 
thickness,, and much softer beds below. The hard beds above project many 
yards beyond the softer, which are washed out, forming a deep cave behind 
the fall, and the stream pours through a narrow crevice above into a deep 
pool below. Around on the rocks, in the cave like chamber, are set beau 
tiful ferns, with delicate fronds and enameled stalks. The little frondlets 
have their points turned down, to form spore cases. It has very much the 
appearance of the Maiden's Hair fern, but is much larger. This delicate foliage 
covers the rocks ah 1 about the fountain, and gives the chamber great beauty. 
But we have little time to spend in admiration, so on we go. 
We make fine progress this afternoon, carried along by a swift river, 
and shoot over the rapids, finding no serious obstructions. 
The canon walls, for two thousand five hundred or three thousand feet, 
are very regular, rising almost perpendicularly, but here and there set with 
narrow steps, and occasionally we can see away above the broad terrace, 
to distant cliffs. 
We camp to night in a marble cave, and find, on looking at our reck 
oning, we have run twenty two miles. 
August 24. The canon is wider to day. The walls rise to a vertical 
height of nearly three thousand feet. In many places the river runs under 
a cliff, in great curves, forming amphitheatres, half dome shaped. 
