The region through which the chafing waters of the Colorado run is forbidding in the extreme, a vast Sahara of waste and inutility; a desert too dreary for either vegetable or animal life; a land that is haunted with wind-storm, on which ride the furies of desolation. But there is in its very bleakness and consumptive degeneracy something that appeals to the observer; a sympathy is aroused that stimulates contemplation of the wondrous works of Deity, of the omnipotent hand that sows seeds of plenty in one place and scatters tares of poverty in another; that makes the valleys to laugh with verdure, and the plains to wail with nakedness. In this sterile domain, this borderland of phantasy and reality, nature is so distraught that the supernatural seems to hold carnival, and in the forms which we here behold there is constant suggestion of chaos. The earth is parched to sterility, and yet there are abundant evidences that in centuries long ago this same land was abundantly blessed with an amazing fertility. Depressions ramifying the region are the dry beds of what were once water-courses, and the whole plateau is garish with rocks over which life-giving floods once poured their vivifying nourishment. But the friable nature of both soil and rock has given way before the action of the river, which has constantly deepened its path and drained the moisture from the earth. Now it is like the Moon, a parched district, save for the single stream which, instead of supplying sustenance, is eating its vitals. The channel is worn more than 5,000 feet deep, with stupendous banks terraced and wrought into shapes most fantastic, and at places diabolic. Imagine a chasm that at times is less than a quarter of a mile wide and more than a mile deep, the bed of which is a tossing, roaring, madly impetuous flood; winding its way in a sinuous course along walls that are painted with all the pigments known to nature! What an imposing spectacle; what a scene of awesome grandeur; what a sublime vision of mightiness! But the geologist sees in the crags and precipices, the strata and bed of that brawling stream, the handwriting of nature, the easily decipherable physical history and geology of the land. The antiquarian and ethnologist, following after, translate the relics of rude habitations found along the cliffs, and the skulls fortunately recovered from the ruins, into a story of the ancient people who in the long centuries ago dared to make their homes in these almost inaccessible fastnesses, driven to such refuges by the ruthless hand of persecution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration: