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Show • GYPSUM OANON-A SIDE GORGE. 65 occupy myself in collecting resin from the pifion pines, which are found in great abundance. One of the principal objects in making this climb was to get this resin, for the purpose of smearing our boats; but I have with me no means of carrying it down. The day is very hot, and my coat was left in camp, so I have no linings to tear out. Then it occurs to me to cut off the sleeve of my shirt, tie it up at one end, and in this little sack I collect about a gallon of pitch. After taking observations for altitude, I wander back on the rock, for an hour or two, when suddenly I notice that a storm is coming from the south. I seck a shelter in the rocks; but when the storm bursts, it comes down as a flood from the heavens, not with gentle .drops at first, slowly increasing in quantity, but ns if suddenly poured out. I am thoroughly drenched, and almost washed away. It lasts not more than half. an hour, when the clouds sweep by to the north, and I have sunshine agam. In the mean time, I have discovered a better way of getting down, and I start for camp, making the greatest haste possible. On reaching the bottom of the side canon, I find a thousand streams rolling down the cliffs on every side, carrying with them r~d sand ; and these all unite in the canon below, in one great stream of red mud. Traveling as fast as I can run, I soon reach the foot of the stream, for the rain did not reach the lower end of the canon, and the water is_running down a dry bed of sand; and, although it comes in waves, several feet high and fifteen or twenty feet in width, the sands soak it up, and it is lost. Bnt wave follows wave, and rolls along, and is swallowed up; and still the floods come on from above. I find that I can travel faster than the stream; so I hasten to camp, and teJI the men there is a river coming down the canon. W o carry our camp equipage hastily from the bank, to where we think it will be above the water. Then we stand by, and see the river roll on to join the Colorado. Great quantities of gypsum are found at the bottom of the gorge; so we name it Gypsum Catlon . • July 27.-W e have more rapids and falls until noon; then we come to a narrow place in the cailon, with vertical walls for several hundred feet, above which are steep steps and sloping rocks back to the summits. The river is very narrow, and we make our way with groat ca.re and much 9 oor .. , |
