Cataracts 
279 
of these breaks could be jumped, but some of them were too 
wide for safety. The surface was largely barren sandstone, 
only a patch of sand here and there sustaining sometimes a 
bush or stunted cedar. It is the Land of Standing Rocks, as 
the Utes call it. 
The supplies were now gone over and carefully and evenly 
divided, so that an accident to one boat should not cripple us 
any more than possible, and on Tuesday, the 19th of Septem¬ 
ber, our bows were headed down the Colorado. A few miles 
below the Junction, a trail was seen coming down a canyon on 
the left, showing that the Utes have always known how to find 
the place. If Macomb had been properly guided he could have 
reached it. The familiar roar of rapids soon came to our ears, 
and thenceforth there was no respite from them. The first 
was so ugly that the boats were lowered by lines, the second 
was much the same, and then we reached a third which was 
even worse. The water was now growing cold, and as one’s 
clothes are always wet when running rapids or portaging on 
the Colorado, we felt the effects of the deep shadows, com¬ 
bined with the cold drenchings. Our dinners were quickly pre¬ 
pared, for we were on allowance and Andy was not bothered 
with trying to satisfy our appetites; he cooked as much as 
directed, and if there were hungry men around it was not his 
fault. We all felt that short rations were so much ahead of 
nothing that there was no grumbling. The volume of water 
was now nearly double what it had been on the Green, and 
the force of the rapids was greatly augmented. Huge boulders 
on the bottom, which the Green would have turned over only 
once or twice, here were rolled along, when they started, for 
many yards sensible to not the eye but to the ear. This was a 
distinct feature of Cataract Canyon and shows the declivity to 
be very great and the boulders to be well worn. The de¬ 
clivity for a few miles is greater than in Lodore, perhaps the 
greatest on the river. Sometimes in Cataract the rumble 
of these boulders was mistaken for distant thunder. At one 
rapid I remember that a rock many feet square was swaying 
from the current. After dinner, the boats were lowered over 
the rapid, fall, cataract, or whatever it might be called, before 
