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Show FLAMING GORGE. 11 Occasionally, deer are started from the glades among the willows; and several wild geese, after a chase through the water, are shot. After dinner, we pass through a short, narrow canon into a broad valley; from this, long, lateral valleys stretch back on either side as far as the eye can reach. Two or three miles below, Henry's Fork enters from the right. We land a short distance above the junction, where a cache of instruments and rations was made several months ago, in a cave at the foot of the cliff, a distance back from the river. Here it was safe from the elements and wild beasts, but not from man. Some anxiety is felt, as we have learned that a party of Indians have been camped near it for several weeks. Our fears are soon allayed, for we find it all right. Our chronometer wheels are not taken for hair ornaments; our barometer tubes, for beads; nor the sextant thrown into the river as "bad medicine," as had been predicted. Taking up our cache, we pass down to the foot of the Uinta Mountains, and, in a cold storm, go into camp. The river is running to the south; the mountains have an easterly and westerly trend directly athwart its course, yet it glides on in a quiet way as if it thought a mountain range 110 formidable obstruction to its course. It enters the range by a flaring, brilliant, red gorge, that may be seen from the north a score of miles away. The great mass of the mountain-ridge through which the gorge is cut is composed of bright vermilion rocks; but they are surmounted by broad bands of mottled buff and gray, and these bands come down with a gentle curve to the water's edge on the nearer slope of the mountain. This is the head of the first canon we are about to explore-an introductory one to a series made by the river through this range. We name it Flaming Gorge. The cliffs or walls we find, on measurement, to be about one thousand two hundred feet high. May 27.-To-day it rains, and we employ the time in repairing one of our barometers, which was broken on the way from New York. A new tube has to be put in; that is, a long glass tube has to be filled with mercury four or five inches at a time, and each installment boiled over a spirit-lamp. It |
