A mile and a half above the confluence is The Slide, a jumbled mass of angular blocks of rock that fell from the northwest canyon wall and originally probably extended all the way to the southeast bank of the river. As shown in figure 78, it still extends nearly across the river, leaving only a narrow deep chute along the southeast bank. Just after the photograph was taken, we hit rough fast water in the chute, with waves about 2 feet high. At higher stages of the river, progressively more of The Slide is covered by water, and there is less tendency for waves to form. The date of this landslide is not known, but it is shown on a map by Herron (1917, pl. 22A) made prior to 1917 and may well have occurred during prehistoric times. Soon we reach the confluence of the Green and Colorado Rivers (figs. 59, 60). This important junction of two mighty rivers was noted by all previous voyagers, but their impressions of it differed considerably. Powell (1875, p. 56) remarked: These streams unite in solemn depths, more than one thousand two hundred feet below the general surface of the country. The walls of the lower end of Stillwater Cañon are very beautifully curved [see fig. 67], as the river sweeps in its meandering course. The lower end of the cañon through which the Grand comes down, is also regular, but much more direct, and we look up this stream, and out into the country beyond, and obtain glimpses of snow clad peaks, the summits of a group of mountains known as the Sierra La Sal [La Sal Mountains]. Down the Colorado, the cañon walls are much broken. Dellenbaugh (1902, p. 277) gave a fuller description but concluded: “In every way the Junction is a desolate place”—an appraisal with which I disagree. The most colorful account I have read is that of Captain Francis Marion Bishop, a member of Powell’s 1871 expedition, who recorded in his journal for September 15, 1871 (1947, p. 202): Well, we are at last, after many days of toil and labor, here at the confluence of the two great arteries of this great mountain desert. No more shall our frail boats dash through thy turbid waters, Old Green, and no more shall we press on to see the dark flood from the peaks and parks of Colorado. Grand and Green here sink to thy rest, and from thy grave the _Colorado de Grande_ shall flow on forever, and on thy bosom henceforth will we battle with rock and wave. One can hardly tell which is the largest of the two rivers. Neither seems to flow into the other, but there seems to be a blending of both, and from their union rolls the Colorado River.