Having pretty thoroughly photographed the region roundabout Manitou, we hitched our camera car to a train on the Colorado Midland and started westward for Salt Lake, and to embalm the scenery that lay between. The way led around the base of Pike’s Peak, passed Cascade CaÑon, and along Bear Creek, the road doubling upon itself and twisting around in the most tortuous course imaginable in order to get through the mountain defiles. Every foot of the route is grand, for there is no point that does not offer a view of scenic splendors beautiful, awesome and sublime. So rugged, tumultuous and wonderfully aberrant is the way, that the road plunges through no less than eight tunnels in traversing as many miles, and thus the traveler is whirled through the heart and arms of the mountains. The approach to Green Mountain Falls is up a valley which spreads out into a fascinating landscape, where the green of the meadowlands is set in a brown frame of sky-piercing peaks and impending cliffs. Fontaine River refreshes the glade that opens through the towering range, and a little way from the town the water goes leaping down Foster’s Falls in a sheet of liquid crystal. It is from this cascade that Green Mountain Falls takes its name. But besides this deep dash of broken water, there are many other beautiful falls in the vicinity which have served to make of the place a popular resort, indeed, one of the greatest in Colorado.

Onward we speed through valleys aflame with flowers and noisy with the laughter of gamboling streams, until, seventy miles from Colorado Springs, we plunge into a gorge known by its length as Eleven-Mile CaÑon. It lies directly in the way to South Park, and is wonderful not so much for its darkling depths as for its marvelous petrifactions and other natural curiosities; its great masses of granite that have broken away from the peaks above and become a wall to the turbulent torrent that has cleft the mountains on its bridleless way to the sea. Thence our train winds around, up hill, past lakes, trout streams, and ranches, until we stop a while at Buena Vista, where the train pauses on the side of Gold Hill Mountain, fully one thousand feet above the town. From this natural observatory a beautiful view is had indeed: Below is the madly-rushing Arkansas, and the silvery Cottonwood Creek that joins its waters with the river at this point. Buena Vista is in a valley that glows like an emerald in the sun, across which rises a giant bank of mountains known as the Saguache range, in which we distinguish the collegiate trinity of mounts Harvard, Yale and Princeton, each being above 14,000 feet, and the former the second highest in the Rocky Mountains. Snowy and Sangre de Cristo ranges are also visible from this point, while eleven miles up Cottonwood Pass is Cottonwood Lake, a very gem set in a wilderness of snow-covered peaks. It is the same distance from Buena Vista to the summit of Mt. Princeton, reached by an easy wagon road, and on this lofty pedestal the observer sweeps the horizon with enraptured vision that commands a view of Salida, Poncha Pass, the wide expanse of South Park, and grand old Pike’s Peak one hundred miles away; Twin Lakes are twenty-five miles to the north, near Buffalo Peaks, where the sportsman finds a paradise and the health-seeker is exhilarated with balsamic winds; while all around, whichever way we look, the omnipotence of the Creator is exhibited in the mightiness of His handiwork as displayed in the weirdly broken landscape of jocund mountain peaks, bowlders of granite torn from the great heart of the earth, babbling streams, tumbling water-falls, and teeming valleys.

After leaving Buena Vista the route was along the Arkansas River, through somewhat less rugged scenery, and on by Leadville, a city whose life is drawn from the bowels of the mountain. The whole territory is speckled and dotted with engine houses, and derricks, and flumes, and cavities, where the cupidity of man has laid a tribute upon the everlasting hills, and is collecting it by the sweat of his brow and the exercise of his genius.

The road continues to rise until we reach Hagerman Tunnel, a mammoth passage-way bored through solid rock. Its length is 2,164 feet, and to provide perfect ventillation the cut is eighteen feet wide and nearly as many high. The grade is a continually ascending one from Colorado Springs to this point, where an altitude of 11,530 feet is reached, and the slope towards the Pacific begins. Just as we emerge from Hagerman Tunnel, Loch Ivanhoe bursts into glorious view, a silvery sheet that wraps the cold feet of Snowy Mountain, while off to the left, like a sign of hope to the Christian traveler, is the Mount of the Holy Cross. This wonderful peak has become a veritable shrine, visited as it is by thousands, whose reverent feelings it never fails to excite. The mountain obtains its name and reputation from the clefts on its northern side near the summit, which are in the form of a cross and in which the snow lies at such a depth that summer suns never melt it. The height of this peak is 14,176 feet, but though not so lofty as some others in Colorado, it is apparently more exposed and holds the snow longest, the summit being nearly always covered.

The next point of interest on the way to Salt Lake is Glenwood Springs, situated at the junction of Grand and Roaring Fork Rivers. This place derives its importance from its numerous thermal springs of great remedial virtues, and the beautiful adornments which a lavish but well-directed use of money has provided. The situation, too, is one of great natural picturesqueness, as the scenery rivals that about Manitou. Glenwood Springs is located at the head of Grand River CaÑon, which extends a distance of sixteen miles through colossal mountains, the palisades of which rise in serried ranks and terminate in towering columns and gigantic turrets frequently 2,000 feet above the bed of the river. It is through this tremendous chasm that the railroad runs, so that travelers have a perfect view of the Titanic scenery from the car windows, as they are whirled through it. Three miles from Glenwood Springs is No Name CaÑon, while further up the stream is a tremendous fissure which admits the river, and on account of its wildly savage appearance is called Grizzly CaÑon. Ten miles more towards the river’s source is Dead Horse CaÑon, which may be gained only at the expense of most laborious effort, for the trail is over great bowlders and along crumbling walls which frown far above the roaring waters below. But away up in this darksome retreat of nature, where the lion and bear have their haunts, is Meteor Falls, that leaps almost out of the mouth of the caÑon and hurls its waters down a precipice nearly one hundred feet deep, and then spreads through crevices of the rocks into a score of separate streams. Not far distant is Alexander’s Cave, which, though not so well known, is much grander in size and more curious with stalactite formations than those near Manitou, which have an undeserved fame. From the summit of a mountain just east of Glenwood, and reached by a walk of three miles, an immense expanse of charming scenery is viewable. For seventy miles towards the east extends the snow-crowned chain of the Continental Divide, while towards the north, like a babe sleeping to the lullabys of a brooklet’s voice, lies the White River plateau. Southward the observer’s vision swings across the valleys of Roaring Fork and Crystal River to the Elk range, and then sweeps around to the west, where it lingers on Book Cliffs, ninety miles away, which gleam with scintillant beauty, and inspire with a grandeur that fills the very soul with wondering ecstasy.

The tumultuous anarchism of nature, the wild riot of natural forces, the savage disarrangement, the chaotically indefinable throes of internal madness that characterize the region, suggests other wonders of eruption and erosion, the dissolution and disorganization which have been wrought along the water-course and which has gnawed its way through these everlasting—nay, it would appear, transitory—mountains. The first travelers that fought their way into these vastnesses of caÑon, roaring peak and soughing forests, carried back to civilization wondrous tales of the things which they had seen, and though discredited as the conceptions of perfervid imaginations, others were stimulated to seek the proofs, and confirm the theories that were offered by adventurous gold-hunters. The Government itself, unconscious of its own possessions, joined in the search for the wondrous evidences and sent expeditions into the Rocky Mountain regions to make topographic and geologic investigations, the results of which were to increase surprise. Operations in the west, chiefly against the Mohave Indians, made it necessary also for the Government to ascertain the most convenient routes for the transportation of supplies to the military posts in New Mexico and Utah, and in this search the Colorado River became an object of special interest, because if navigable it presented the easiest way to the seat of war. In order to determine the question, an expedition was despatched by the Secretary of War, in 1858, under the command of Lieutenant J. C. Ives, chief of topographical engineers. An iron steamboat fifty feet long was built in Philadelphia, which, being in sections convenient for transportation, was shipped by way of Panama to the Gulf of California, and put into service at Fort Yuma, at the mouth of the Colorado River, for an ascent of that stream.

The expedition thus conducted by Lieutenant Ives resulted in the exploration of a large territory which was before his advent therein a terra incognita, except that it had been partially traversed in 1540 by a few Spanish explorers, acting under orders of the Viceroy of New Spain, whose reports, however, were so crude as to be almost valueless. Ives succeeded in ascending the Colorado a distance of 425 miles in his steamboat, which he concluded was within seventy-five miles of the head of navigation during the most favorable season. The practical results were not of very great value, but his reports were extremely interesting, chiefly for the descriptions of marvelous scenery which they contained. Or, as he writes, “The region explored after leaving the navigable portion of the Colorado—though, in a scientific point of view, of the highest interest, and presenting natural features whose strange sublimity is perhaps unparalleled in any part of the world—is not of much value.”

Subsequently the Government determined to effect an exploration of the headwaters of the Colorado, and to this end Major J. W. Powell, chief of the U. S. Survey Corps, was sent out in charge of a party of a dozen equally intrepid men, with instructions to descend the stream if possible. To accomplish his purpose Major Powell provided four staunchly-built row-boats in which he and his party debarked at Green River Station, on the 24th of May, 1869, to run the gauntlet of caÑon, maelstrom, rapids and waterfalls in the Green and Colorado Rivers. It is to Major Powell’s report that we are indebted for descriptions of the terribly sublime scenery of these two streams, which surpass in wonder every other region on the globe, and to the photographer of that expedition we make our acknowledgments for several of the views which are here reproduced. Mr. W. H. Jackson, who was for a long while attached to the survey corps as photographer, has also kindly furnished us with a number of exquisite pictures of the more accessible caÑons of the Colorado, and to him, therefore, credit in large share must be given. Our own party, while thoroughly equipped for photographing regions contiguous to railroads, was unprepared for making a trip down the most dangerous of rivers, and we have accordingly been compelled to rely for our photographs of the Green and Colorado CaÑons upon the work of those above credited. Condensing as much as possible the elaborate and entrancing report of Major Powell, as it fills a very large volume, his explorations may be thus hastily described:

Almost from the beginning of the trip, the scenery was delightful, variegated as it was with high-reaching cliffs dyed in great variety of colors, and long lines of mountains stretching away into an infinity of distance. The blue sky above, green shades of forest pines along the side, empurpled clouds catching the tints of a rising and setting sun, and lines of buff, red and brown, marking the strata of the banks, made a picture which no painter has the genius to reproduce. Green River enters the Minta plateau by the Flaming Gorge, and after reaching the heart of the chain turns eastward, then southward, cutting its way out by the splendid caÑon of Lodore. Then following the base of the range for a few miles a sudden caprice seizes it. Not content with the terrible gash it has inflicted upon this noble chain, it darts at it viciously once more and cuts a horseshoe caÑon in its flank 2,700 feet deep, then twists and emerges near the point of entrance. Thenceforward the river runs a tortuous course of 300 miles through gently inclined terraces which rise gradually as the stream descends. Further down, the Kaibab (Buckskin) Plateau rises to contest its passage, and a chasm 5,000 to 6,000 feet is the result. The whole province is a vast category of instances of river channels cutting through plateaus, mesas, and terraces where the strata dip up-stream, as will be more particularly described in the summary of Major Powell’s hazardous explorations.

Sixty miles from Green River the expedition floated into Flaming Gorge, a chasm fifteen hundred feet in depth, through which the water poured in swift measures and gave intimation of a more impetuous course further down. But undeterred the gallant party proceeded, through Red and Horseshoe CaÑons, where the walls drew closer and big bowlders in the stream caused the water to boil with such ominous signs that portage around the obstructions was necessary. Thereafter the way became more difficult, for to dangerous rapids were added lofty falls, while along the vertical walls in places there was scarcely a space to set foot. Frequently the only possible means of passage was by lowering the boats by ropes attached to stem and stern, which taxed the strength of the men as well as the staunchness of the crafts. Time and again, in running rapids, the boats were capsized, but being built in water-tight compartments they righted themselves and were a refuge for the men, who clung to the sides until they drifted near the shore.

At one place, which Major Powell named Disaster Falls, one of the boats was swept over a fall and carried down to a rapid, where, striking broadside against a bowlder, it was broken in two, leaving the three occupants adrift to battle with the surging waters. Their escape from drowning was almost a miracle, due to good luck and the extraordinary efforts of their brave comrades. In this spot the walls were more than 3,000 feet high, and drawn so near together that only a thin strip of sky was visible, which at night-time appeared to rest on the jagged edges of the cliffs.

Sixteen days after their departure from the starting point, the adventurous party were swept into Lodore CaÑon, which extends its colossal walls along twenty-four miles of the river, sometimes in the form of hanging cliffs, tousled and gray with stunted vegetation, and rising nearly three thousand feet above the stream, and again in beautiful terraces of red sandstone that spread upward till they are lost in the Uintah Mountains.

It was not until two months after leaving Green River Station that the explorers approached the junction with Grand River. As they dropped out of the winding gorge whence they had descended, they caught a view of a wondrous fissure, down which poured a rushing stream which appeared to issue from the very bowels of the earth, so bottomless seemed the channel. It was Grand River, which, in many respects, is the counterpart of its sister stream, having the same features of waterfall, rapid, and awesome caÑon, into which the sunlight falls only at midday, and where night-birds are on the wing almost constantly. It is a fitting thing that these two remarkable rivers should mix their fretful waters and flow on together in a perpetual quarrel, through arid plains, until they end their differences in the Gulf of California.

The Colorado River is formed by a union of the Grand and Green Rivers, the former taking its rise near Long’s Peak, and the latter having its source in the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, within a few miles of Fremont’s Peak. The two streams form a junction near a point known as Fort Morrison, in southeast Utah, at the head of the most appalling gorge in the world, called the Grand CaÑon of the Colorado. The scenery along both the Grand and Green Rivers is inexpressibly sublime, rising into towering buttes out of the plains; soaring to the clouds in the form of mountains; revelling in the wildest disorder of landscape, and the most turbulent panorama of mad-dashing streams between walls of amazing height; but the wild passions of both rivers seem to be united with more than double intensity when they mingle their waters and thence become one turbid flood gnawing a way through the southwest desert. How hard it is for the inexperienced eye to catch a mental view of the tremendous chasm of the Colorado, however realistic a descriptive writer may paint it, for height and depth almost lose their significance when we apply the terms to dizzy crags above, and the dark lonesomeness of Plutonian recesses beneath.

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.

In many places, Major Powell found overarching cliffs, formed by the river in making a sharp bend eating away the shale and gypsum of the base. Occasional inlets were observed, cut by creeks that have been dried up for ages; and following up one of these deep aroytas a little way, he came to a natural stair-way of small and regular terraces that led up fully 500 feet, to an oasis of vegetation, out of which burst a spring that lost its waters before they had run a hundred feet down the parched cliff. Just below this point a beautiful glen was found, where the walls of the caÑon appeared to almost meet above the deep and quiet river, which, though narrowed, had an unobstructed channel. The cliffs were of a marvelous beauty, appalling in height, but as variegated as a bed of poppies, with their strata of white, pink, saffron, gray and red.

Passing out of Glen CaÑon, the party came directly into the jaws of another chasm, where the river had excavated an amphitheater of mammoth proportions, and then plunged into a gorge where both the walls and bed of the stream were of marble so pure that they shone with an iridescent splendor, and the now lazy river reflected its walls until looking down was gazing into the heavenly depths. Just below was Cataract CaÑon, the entrance to which was indicated by a lofty cliff that, from a distance, shone like a crystal mountain, but which, on closer inspection, was discovered to be the source of many springs whose waters glinted in the sun like jewels.

In many places the arid desolation which was noticeable in the upper portion and on the plateau, and which stretched away on both sides, was broken by patches of vegetation, and the appearance of side gorges in which creeks were still contributing to the river. Storms were not infrequent, too, and these occurring where the caÑon walls were a mile high and close together, produced an effect that was almost supernatural in its awfulness. Every obscuration of the sun brought dense shadows in the chasm, which were split in twain by blinding flashes, while the deep thunder echoed sharply between the cliffs, producing a roaring sound that was almost deafening. Such rain-storms, however, were invariably confined to the immediate vicinity of the caÑon, the territory lying two or three miles east or west continuing parched, with hardly a cloud above it. Even more remarkable than the stupendous walls which confine the Colorado River, are the ruined cave habitations which are to be seen along the lofty and apparently inaccessible ledges, in which a vanished race long years ago evidently sought refuge from their enemies. These caves are no doubt natural excavations, but in many instances the mouths are partially walled and otherwise fortified. They were reached by very narrow, precipitous and devious paths, and being extremely difficult to attain by the occupants themselves, presented an impregnable front to invaders. But the security which such cavernous retreats afforded was purchased at great cost, for we wonder how the inhabitants managed to exist, situated as they were in a desolate country, where there was great scarcity of both vegetable and animal life. Perhaps the most strikingly beautiful sections of the Grand CaÑon are the Vermilion Cliffs, and the Temples and Towers of the Virgin, the one fading into the other. Vermilion Cliffs are a great wall of remarkable height and length of persistent proportions, and so ornate with natural sculpturing, and rich with parti-coloring, as to justify the most extravagant language in describing them. Each of the several terraces has its own style of architecture, and yet they contrast with one another in the most harmoniously artistic manner. The Elephantine ruins on the Nile, the temples of Greece, the pagodas of China, and the cathedrals of Southern Europe, present no more variety of pleasing structures than those encountered in descending the stair-way from the high plateaus to the deep CaÑon of the Colorado. As we pass from terrace to terrace, the scene is constantly changing; not only in the bolder and grander masses which dominate the landscape, but in every detail and accessory as well: in the tone of the color-masses, in the vegetation, and in the spirit and subjective influences of the scenery. The profile of the Vermilion Cliffs is very complex, though conforming to a definite type and composed of simple elements. While varying much in different localities, it never loses its typical character. The cliffs consist of an ascending series of vertical ledges, rising story above story, with intervening slopes covered with heaps of rocks, through which project their fretted edges. The composite effect given by the multiple cliffs and sloping water-tables rising tier above tier, is highly architectural, and shows in striking contrast with the rough and craggy aspect of the cliffs of other regions. This effect is much increased by the aberrant manner in which the wall advances in promontories or recedes in alcoves, and by the wings and gables that jut out from every lateral face. In many places side caÑons have cut the terrace platforms deeply, and open in magnificent gate-ways upon the broad desert plain in front. We look into them from afar, wonderingly and questioningly, with our fancy pleased to follow their windings until their sudden turns carry them into distant, unseen depths. In other places the cliffs verge into towering buttes, rearing their unassailable summits into the clouds, rich with the aspiring forms of a pure Gothic type, and flinging back in red and purple the intense sunlight that is poured upon them. Could the imagination blanch those colors, it might compare them with vast icebergs, sent from the face of a glacier and floating majestically out to sea.

Grand, glorious, sublime, are the pictorial cliffs of vermilion hue; yet a more magnificent spectacle is presented by an unfolding of the panorama that stretches southward, revealing as it does the heavenly crowned and resplendently painted temples and towers of the Virgin. Here the slopes, the serpentine ledges, and the bosses of projecting rock, interlarded with scanty soil, display all the colors of the rainbow, and in the distance may be likened to the painter’s palette. The bolder tints are of maroon, purple, chocolate, magenta and lavender, with broad bands of white laid in horizontal belts. The caÑon proper is 7,000 feet deep here, but less than two miles beyond it stands the central and commanding object of this sublime painting, the glorious western temple that looms up 4,000 feet above the rapid river. This, however, is only the foreground of a matchless panorama, for right opposite are a mighty throng of structures wrought in the same exalted style, separated by two principal forks of the Virgin, known as the Parunuweap and the Mukuntuweap, or Little Zion Valley. At one point the two side caÑons swing around and form a junction, where the walls break into giant pediments covered with the most remarkable and picturesque carvings. The sumptuous, bewildering and mazy effects are boldly discernible; but detail is lost when attempt is made to analyze it. The flank of the wall receding up the Mukuntuweap is similarly sculptured and decorated for two miles, and then changes into new kaleidoscopic forms still more wonderful and impressive. A row of towers half a mile high is sculptured out of the palisade, and stands in relief before its face. There is an eloquence in their forms which stirs the imagination with a singular power, and kindles in even the dullest mind a glowing response. Just behind them, and rising a thousand feet higher, is the eastern temple, crowned with a cylindric dome of white sandstone. Directly in front is a complex group of white towers, springing from a central pile and mounting to the clouds. The highest peak in this cumulus mass is almost pure white, with brilliant streaks of carmine descending its vertical walls, while the truncated summit is a deep red.

Nothing can exceed the wondrous beauty of Little Zion Valley, which separates the two temples and their respective groups of towers. In its proportions it is probably equal to Yosemite, but it very far exceeds that natural wonder in the nobility and beauty of sculpturing. We are not surprised that a Mormon zealot gave to this caÑon the name of Little Zion, since the scenery is so imposing as to immediately and powerfully suggest those “houses not built with hands.”

Far to the westward is to be seen the last palisade, lifting its imposing front behind an army of towers and domes to an altitude of more than 3,000 feet. Beyond it the view changes quickly, for it passes at once into the Great Basin, which to this region is another world.

The passage of the Grand CaÑon of the Colorado, that most fearful, colossal and extraordinary chasm in all the world’s surface, was completed on August 29th, the perils which beset the explorers being constant and the hardest work unremitting. Nor was it accomplished without great sacrifice. The dangers so increased that three of the men deserted, whose fate, however, was most tragic, for they were shortly afterwards murdered by Indians. Starvation threatened the party, for repeated capsizing of the boats resulted in the loss of nearly all their provisions, while exposure brought on illness, so that the men were in a desperate situation when they finally emerged from the jaws of the caÑon and found succor among some hospitable Indians.