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These walls are often perpendicular, though they generally accline somewhat, and are ornamented with scattering shrubs and cedars, which in vain seek to hide the forbidding deformity of nature.

They frequently intrude to the very water's edge, and pile at their feet and in the foaming current huge masses of rock, strown about in all the wild disorder of savage scenery; then, expanding at brief intervals, they picture many sweet, enchanting spots, that smile and bloom in unfading loveliness, where angels might recline, and, listening to the chime of their own voices, echoed from rock to rock and reverberated with unheard-of melody, might fancy themselves in heaven; then again closing, to open in like manner at some favored point, till they finally give place to a broad and beautiful valley, from one to three miles in width, of unsurpassed fertility, and abounding at the proper season in every variety of fruit and flower known to the country, which, mingling amid the scattering cottonwoods, (free from under-brush and mimicking in their arrangement the regularity of art,) seem to portray the fabled fields of Elysian bliss.

This valley extends from the mouth of the cañon to the junction of the de las Animas with the Arkansas — a distance of twenty-five or thirty miles; for ten or fifteen of which it is skirted with receding hills, that maintain their stern sublimity till they at length become swallowed up in the far-spreading prairie.

This is a favorite resort for deer, antelope, and turkey, which are found in great numbers, gambolling amid its varied beauties, or winding along its narrow defiles and forbidden recesses.

We entered the cañon through a narrow and steep declivity, formed by a small stream, which was shut in by continuous cliffs, that increased in height as they approached their lofty counterparts immuring the angry river.

After winding a day and a half among the crags and confused masses, which constantly intervened to impede our way, in vain searching for an egress, we found it impossible to proceed further, and were forced to climb the almost vertical bank, at an ascent of five or six hundred feet, —frequently lifting our horses over the rocks by means of ropes attached to their bodies and drawn from the impending summit;— this tedious process occupied nearly a day in its completion, and left us upon the lateral table land exhausted in strength and worn down with fatigue.

We were eleven days en route, during which time we suffered greatly from the severity of the weather, hunger, toil, and watching.

The air was bleak, the winds cold and piercing, and the sky almost continually over-cast with clouds, while two or three snow storms contributed their mite to swell the catalogue of comfortless hours.

Our horses, too, had become so exhausted from hard fare and previous service, we were necessitated to travel on foot for most of the distance. But the grand climax of miseries was experienced through lack of food.

A scanty supply of buffalo meat, taken with us at the outset, was consumed at the next meal, and we were left without one morsel to appease the gnawings of appetite for the two days and three nights succeeding. A straggling wolf that chance threw in our way, at the expiration of this