Page:Rocky Mountain life.djvu/143

 almost vertical in their position, and ornamented with an occasional stunted pine, or cedar, or shrub of the buffalo-berry, (shepherdia argentsa,) while at their base reposed, in huge masses, a profuse medley of fallen fragments, strown around in all the wild confusion of savage scenery.

A few hundred yards to the left, the Platte forces its way through a barrier of table lands, forming one of those striking peculiarities incident to mountain streams, called a "Cañon"33.

Improving the opportunity afforded by a short stay, I ascended an eminence to enjoy a full view of the grand spectacle. The mountain through which the river finds passage, at this place, is from five to eight hundred feet high, opposing perpendicular walls upon each side, that at many points overhang the narrow stream which sweeps with its foaming waters among the rocks below.

33 The Spanish word "cañon" implies a narrow, tunnel-like passage between high and precipitous banks, formed by mountains or table lands. It is pronounced KANYON and is a familiar term in the vocabulary of a mountaineer.

This cañon is nearly two miles in length. About midway of the distance the whole stream is precipitated in an unbroken volume from a ledge of rocks, causing a cataract of some twenty or twenty-five feet descent.

Standing upon the dizzy verge of this frightful chasm, and gazing adown its dark abyss, the aspect is one of terrific sublimity, and such an one as will cause the beholder to shrink back with instinctive dread!

These walls are principally of red-sandstone, and ferruginous rock, the precise character of which I was unable to determine. Upon the summit noticed an abundance of silex, with some elegant specimens of crystalline quartz, that, reflecting the sun's rays, shone like gems in the crown of a mountain-god; a number of singular ligneous petrifactions also met my observation, principally consisting of pine and cedar.

The surrounding country brought within the scope of vision an interesting and romantic scene. The lofty table land in front (with diversified surfaces of granitic rock and vegetable earth, affording a scanty nourishment for herbage and foothold for dwarfish cedars and pines) spread far away to the snow-clad mountains of the north, —while rearward at its base lay the broad valley through which passes the Oregon trail, shut in upon two sides by rugged hills; and farther on arise the snowy sides of the Laramie chain, with their cloud-capped summits. To the left, peak towering above peak, in gradual succession, point to the ridge dividing the waters of the Atlantic and Pacific; and, to the right, the lessening eminences, vallons, and plateaux, guide the eye to where the boundless prairie revels in wild beauty and owns itself the realm of eternal Solitude!

How magnificent must be the scene when spring arrays the surrounding landscape in her own loveliness, and bedecks the wilderness with gaudy verdure!

Bearing again to the left, we continued— our course by a winding buffalo-path which soon brought us to a broad valley bordering upon the Platte.