136 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
naiTOwer canon, often as deep as the first, will be found. One such that we 
followed is ten miles long, from fifty to three hundred feet deep, and fre 
quently not more than ten feet wide at the top. 
As peculiar as the canons, are the mesas, sometimes miles in length, 
and only a few hundred yards in width, presenting in the distance the 
appearance of huge knife blades. These mesas are usually covered by a 
loose, sandy soil, though occasionally wide surfaces of bare rock are seen. 
Occasionally the canons widen into little, alcovelike valleys, a few 
acres in extent, rock walled, and covered by dense growths of grass, canes, 
or willows. Travel through this country was exceedingly slow and difficult. 
Our progress was often barred by a canon, along whose brink we were 
compelled to follow, till some broken down slope afforded a way to descend, 
then up or down the cafioii, till another broken slope permitted us to ascend, 
then across a mesa to another canon, repeating the same maneuver a dozen 
times in half that number of miles. 
After a laborious day's work we made fifteen miles, and camped on the 
right bank of the Paria River, 800 feet below Camp No. 4, and at an alti 
tude of about five thousand seven hundred feet above the level of the sea. 
From Camp No. 5 we followed up the Paria River to its junction with 
Table Cliff Creek; then up the latter to its source. Here we climbed a 
thousand feet up a steep, clay ridge, having an average slope of 20, and 
often not more than five feet in thickness at the top, to the head of a narrow 
valley called Potato Valley. Down this we traveled three miles, and made 
Camp No. 6 at a cool spring, in the middle of a beautiful meadow, 1,500 feet 
above our camp on the Paria River, and about seven thousand two hundred 
feet above the sea. To the north, and three miles distant, Table Cliff Pla 
teau rose 3,000 feet above us, its face a succession of inaccessible precipices, 
and steep, broken, tree-clad slopes. From the base of the cliffs, long ridges 
run out to the edge of the valley. To the east, low, rounded hills gradually 
rise higher and higher, till, at an elevation of 1,800 feet above camp, they 
roll off into a long, narrow plateau, bounded on the west by a well marked 
line of cliffs, beginning near the foot of Table Cliff Plateau, and continuing 
southeast sixty miles, to a point on the Colorado River opposite the Navajo 
Mountain. At the western terminus this line is somewhat broken, but 
