LIEUTENANT IVES ON THE GliAND CANON. 199 
THE U-IN-KA-EET MOUNTAINS. 
The plateaus are yet modified in another way. Eruptive mountains, 
beds of black basalt, and volcanic cones are found here and there, and scoria 
and ashes are scattered over the land. There are three great, irregular 
mountains standing on the bendh between the To-ro'-weap Fault and the 
Hurricane Ledge Fault. These great, complex masses of rock, or irregular 
mountains, are called by the Indians U-in-ka'-rets, (Pine Mountains.) 
Lieutenant Whipple, on the first of January, 1854, while making a 
reconnaissance for a railroad route to the Pacific Ocean, camped at a spring 
about thirty miles to the southwest of the San Francisco Mountain, to which 
he gave the name "New Year's Spring." From this elevated position on the 
plateau he looked north, and over the chasm, in the distance, 200 miles 
away, he saw these mountains. Perhaps he discovered but a single peak, 
but on the map of the country over which the reconnaissance was made, he 
has indicated these peaks, and called them "High Mountains." Probably 
he intended this as a provisional name only. 
In the winter of 1857 '58, when Lieutenant Ives explored the Lower 
Colorado, he reached, with a boat, a point on the river about ten miles below 
the Rio Virgen, and about eighty miles below the Grand Canon. Being 
unable to proceed farther in his boat, a land expedition was organized, and 
he explored the plateaus to the south, descending to the mouth of Diamond 
Creek, as I have mentioned. His first view of the canon, and the great 
plateaus through which it is carved, was obtained April 3, 1858, and is thus 
described: "At the end of ten miles the ridge of the swell was attained, and 
a splendid panorama burst suddenly into view. In the foreground were low 
table hills, intersected by numberless ravines; beyond these a lofty line of 
bluffs marked the edge of an immense canon; a wide gap was directly 
ahead, and through it were beheld, to the extreme limit of vision, vast pla 
teaus, towering one above the other, thousands of feet in the air, the long, 
horizontal bands broken, at intervals, by wide and profound abysses, and 
extending a hundred miles to the north-, till the deep azure blue faded into 
a light cerulean tint, that blended with the dome of the heavens. The 
famous Big Canon was before us, and for a long time we paused in wonder- 
