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Show 336 ENTRANCE INTO CATARACT CANON. plenty of trees. I arrived at a rancheria which is on the Rio Jabesiia, which I named ( Rio) de San Antonio; and in order to reach this place I traversed a strait { past por un estrecho) which I called the Nuebo Canfran. This extends about three quarters ( of a league); on one side is a very lofty cliff, and on the other a horrible abyss ( voladero). This difficult road passed, there presented itself another and a worse one, which obliged us to leave, I my mule and they their horses, in order that we might climb down a ladder of wood. 21 All the soil of these caxones is red; there 81 This ladder was probably not the identical one which Ives found on Apr. 13, 1858; but it was in the identical spot- there is no other way down the awful chasm which leads from the 6,000- foot level of the plateau to the 4,000- foot bed of Cataract canon. The trail down this side canon is thus a descent of 2,000 feet into the bowels of the earth, to the place where the Hava-supais live now as they did in 1776. Garces' few words on his " horrible abyss," leading to depths still more profound, may be amplified by Ives' vivid description of his experiences: " Ten miles conducted to the head of a ravine, down which was a well-beaten Indian trail. There was every prospect, therefore, that we were approaching a settlement similar to that of the Hual-pais on Diamond river. The descent was more rapid than the former had been, and in the course of a few miles we had gone down into the plateau one or two thousand feet, and the bluffs on either side had assumed stupendous proportions [ see his fig- 34> P- 106]. Still no signs of habitations were visible. The worn- out and thirsty beasts had begun to flag, when we were brought to a standstill by a fall a hundred feet deep in the bottom of the canon. At the brink of the precipice was an \ |