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Show BONITA BEND. 55 the water's edge, are overhanging on either side. The stream is still quiet,' and we glide along, through a strange, weird, grand region. The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock-cliffs of rock; tables of rock; plateaus of rock; terraces of rock; crags of rock-ten thousand strangely carved forms. Rocks everywhere, and no vegetation; no soil; no sand. In long, gentle curves, the river winds about these rocks. When speaking of these rocks, we must not conceive of piles of boulders, or heaps of fragments, but a whole land of naked rock, with giant forms carved on it: cathedral shaped buttes, towering hundreds or thousands of feet; cliffs that cannot be scaled, and canon walls that shrink the river into insignificance, with vast, hollow domes, and tall pinnacles, and shafts set on the verge overhead, and all highly colored-buff, gray, red, brown, and chocolate; never lichened; never moss-covered; but bare, and often polished. We pass a place, where two bends of the river come together, an intervening rock having been worn away, and a new channel formed across. The old channel ran in a great circle around to the right, by what was once a circular peninsula; then an island; then the water left the old channel entirely, and passed through the, cut, and the old bed of the river is dry. So the great circular rock stands by itself, with precipitous walls all about it, and we find but one place where it can be scaled. Looking from its summit, a long stretch of river is seen, sweeping close to the overhanging cliffs on the right, but having a little meadow between it and the wall on th§ left. The curve is very gentle and regular. We name this Bonita Bend. And just here we climb out once more, to take another bearing on The Butte of the Cross. Reaching an eminence, from which we can overlook the landscape, we are surprised to find that our butte, with its wonderful form, is indeed two buttes, one so standing in front of the other that^ from our last point of view, it gave the appearance of a cross. ; Again, a few miles below Bonita Bend, w§ go out a mile or two along the rocks, toward the Orange Cliffs, passing over terraces paved with jasper. The cliffs are not far away, and we soon reach them, and wander in some deep, painted alcoves, which attracted our attention from the river; then we return to our boats. Late in the afternoon, the water becomes swift, and our boats make |
