Following it down for a hundred feet or more I encountered a terrace with the usual perpendicular face, but not intersected by the ravine along which I was descending. As the footing seemed to be good further along, I dropped myself over the edge of the terrace and comfortably alighted upon the level gallery that was next beneath. These narrow and level galleries surmounted each of the many upright-faced terraces, the latter varying somewhat in height. This mode of descent seemed fairly easy, and was indeed exhilarating. The process was repeated three or four times as other terraces were encountered, until I found myself upon a level gallery twelve to eighteen feet in width and possibly a hundred feet long. Walking the length of this gallery back and forth, I found no point where below it there was not a sheer, perpendicular precipice of more than a hundred feet in height. At each of its ends the gallery narrowed to a point against the cliff which extended far down beneath. Nature had here failed to carry out the general architectural plan of the bluff's structure. I felt earnestly that the terraces should have been constructed with more rigid uniformity. The discovery was now made that the branch ravine which my eyes had been following bore off in its upward course round this cliff and was lower than I had supposed. To return was impossible, for the smooth cliffs down which I had dropped, being absolutely vertical, afforded no better footing than would the side of a perpendicular brick wall. I was on the opposite side of the bluffs from the road which our train had followed, and miles from it. The last glimpse of our wagons showed them moving far away in the distance to the westward. A shot from my revolver would not be heard a tenth of the distance. Even though I should be searched for, it would be practically impossible for friends to follow my tortuous course down those cliffs over which probably no idiot before had dropt himself, and I should not be hunted until missed at night, for we often left the train for long side trips. The bluffs had already been named from one starving unfortunate, but I had no desire to add my own name to its history. As I walked back and forth along that gallery, looking upward and downward for some line of escape, the prospect was not cheerful. I suddenly became both hungry and thirsty.