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In Marble Canyon

In Marble Canyon image
Parent Issue
Day
30
Month
October
Year
1890
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

To give you an idea of the number of the rapids from the head of the Colorado river to this point, near the mouth of the Little Colorado river, a distance of about 290 miles, I will say that there are just 200 rapids, not counting Binall draws or ruñes, and from Lee's Ferry to this point, a distance of eighty miles, there are 100 rapids. We have run the greater part of this 100 and portaged but few, and over many of tliem our boats have danced and jumped at the rate of fifteen miles per hour, and over some, by actual measurement, at the rate of twenty miles per hour for half a mile at a time. Standing in the bow of one of the boata as she goes through one of these shutes, with first the bow and then the stern jumping into the air as she shoots from wave to wave, with the spray of the breakers daahing over one's head, is something the excitement of which can only be understood by being experienced. That part of Marble canyon from Point Retreat for f orty miles down to the mouth of the Little Colorado river is far the most beautiful and most interesting canyon we have yet passed through. At Point Eetreat.the marble walls stand up perpendicularly 800 feet from the water's edge, while the sandstone above benches in slopes and cliffa to 2,500 feet high. Just beyond this the canyon is narrowest, being but a little over 300 feet wide from wall to wall, while the river in places at this stage of water is not over sixty feet wide. The marble rapidly risea till it stands in perpendicular cliffs, 700 to 800 feet high, colored with all the tinta of the rainbow, butmostly red. In many places toward the top it is honeycombed with caves, cavrns, arches and grottoes, with here and there a natural bridge left from onecrag to another, making a most grotesqueand wonderful picture as our little boats glide along that quiet portion of the river so many hundred feet below. At the foot of these cliffs in many places are fountains of pure sparkling water, gushing out from the rock - in one place, vassey 3 raradise, severai hundred feet up the wall- and dropping down among 6hrubbery, ferns and flowers, some of which were found in bloom. Below this, for some distance, are a number of these fountains with large patches of maidenhair ferns clinging to the wall, fifteen to twenty feet above the water, green and fresh, and with the sparkling water running down over them they tnake a most charming picture. Our weather has been most wonderful. The thermometer has never registered at 6 o'clock in the morning lower than 24 deg. above zero, and in the sun in the middle of the day has registered as high as 75 deg. The sun has shown brightly nearly all the time, though for eight days at one time it never shone on us, we being under the shade of the cliffs all the

Article

Subjects
Old News
Ann Arbor Register