surfaces and relieved their somber monotony. Far above, clear and distinct upon the narrow strip of sky, turrets, spires, jagged, statue-like peaks and grotesque pinnacles overlooked the deep abyss."

To this succeeds the Painted Cañon, whose exquisitely tinted walls, though less grand, seem to have excited the artistic taste of the explorers not less than the Mojave Cañon. Then occurs the Black Cañon, where, for twenty-five miles, the narrow river plunges through the sunless depths of the Black Mountains, the precipices on either side rising perpendicularly a thousand feet or more from the water. The little band, in their frail boat, were buried in this fearful gorge for two days, and one follows them through the difficulties and dangers of the pass with breathless interest.

The walls of these cañons, according to Dr. Newberry, the geologist of the expedition, are formed of great masses of granite, porphyry, trap, and other volcanic rocks, with layers of highly crystalline limestone and conglomerates, which are of equal heights, and correspond exactly on either side of the river. The unavoidable inference from these facts is, that the mountain ranges, of which there are several besides those I have mentioned, once crossed the bed of the river and dammed back its flow, filling the valleys between with extensive lakes. These were probably connected by a series of cascades and rapids, which must have been of unparalleled beauty and grandeur; but as Niagara is destroying itself, so have they destroyed themselves. The stupendous precipices, so graphically described by Lieutenant Ives, are the trophies of their unconquerable power, the remnants of those mountain barriers through which the cataracts ate their way and drained the great lakes of the interior.

These chasms, however, with their thousand feet or so of granite and solid porphyries, are but the outer gates preparing the mind for the awful sublimity of the Great Cañon. The local disturbances or oscillations which gave rise to the wild scenery of the lowlands, tossing their originally horizontal layers into lofty mountainous waves, have made no impression upon its walls. The level courses of sandstone,

limestone, and shale, lie upon a bed of granite, of itself a thousand feet thick, without a bend or fault to mar their perfect parallelism. The entire thickness of the first great mesa or plateau, west of the Rocky Mountains, is exposed in the cliffs, and the edges of the severed plain hang in the air over a mile above the river.

"This scenery," says Lieutenant Ives, speaking of a side cañon down which they passed some seventeen miles to the river, "much resembled that of the Black Cañon, excepting that the rapid descent, the increasing magnitude of the colossal piles that blocked the end of the vista, and the corresponding depth and gloom of the gaping chasms into which we were plunging, imparted an unearthly character to a way which might have resembled the portals of the infernal regions." No attempt is made to describe the Great Cañon itself. The explorers seem to have succumbed to the awe created in their own minds, and yielded the greatest homage they could have paid to the unearthly nature of the scenesilence. For three hundred miles the precipitous walls vary from three thousand to six thousand feet in height, and on every side the plain is furrowed by the tributaries, so that "fissures, so profound the eye can not penetrate their gloomy depths, are separated by walls whose thickness one can almost span, and slender spires that seem tottering upon their bases, shoot up thousands of feet from the vaults below."

The country is impassable to man and beast, and none but birds can explore the cavernous abysses. The solitude is unbroken, and the inhospitable rocks deserted, save by a few Indians who drag out a wretched and monotonous existence among the subterranean passages. No vegetation clings to the sides of the cañon or covers the broken surface of the mesa; all is alike naked and savage. The second illustration gives a view of the general aspect of the surface, with other mesas rising in the distance.

The chasm at Niagara excites much wonder, but what shall be said of this? The horizontal strata, answering layer to layer upon either side, are witnesses that can not lie. If this three hundred miles of solid earth had been