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Show 10 EXPLORATION OF THE CAilONS OF THE COLORADO. higher and the depths deeper by the glamour and wHchery of light and shade. Away to the south, the Uinta Mountains sn·etch in a long line ; high peaks thrust into the sky, and snow-fields glittering like lakes of molten silver; and pine-forests in somber green; and rosy clouds playing around the borders of huge, black masses; and heights and clouds, and mountains and snow-fields, and forests and rock-lands, are blended into one grand view. Now t~e sun goes down, and I return to camp. May 25.-W e start early this morning, and run along at a good rate until about nine o'clock, when we are brought up on a gravelly bar. All jump out, and help the boats over by main strength. Then a rain comes on, and river and clouds conspire to give us a thorough drenching. Wet, chilled, and tired to exhaustion, we stop at a cottonwood grove on the bank, build a huge fire, make a cup of coffee, and a1·e soon refreshed and quite merry. When the clouds "get out of our sunshine," we start again. A few miles farther down, a flock of mounta.in-sheep are seen on a cliff to the right. The boats are quietly tied up, and three or four men go after them. In the course of two or three hours, they return. The cook has been successful in bringing down a fat lamb. The unsuceessful hunters taunt him with finding it dead; but it is soon dressed, cooked, and eaten, making a fine four o'clock dinner. "All aboard,'' and down the river for another dozen miles. On the way, we pass the mouth of Black's Fork, a dirty littlo stream that seems somewhat swollen. Just below its mouth, we land and camp. May 26.-To-day, we pass several curiously-shaped buttes, standing between the west bank of the river and the high bluffs beyond. These buttes are outliers of the same beds of rocks exposed on the faces of the bluffs; thinly laminated shales and sandstones of many colors, standing above in vertical cliffs, and buttressed below with a water-carved talus; some of them attain an altitude of nearly a thousand feet above the level of the n ver. We glide quietly down the placid stream past the carved cliffs of the rnauvaises terres, now and then obtaining gHmpses of distant mountains. ..... |
