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The second night we camped in a snow-storm, on the edge of the canyon walls, under the spreading limbs of a grove of mighty silver fir; and next day we went down into the wonderland of the valley itself. I shall always be glad that I was in the Yosemite with John Muir and in the Yellowstone with John Burroughs.
The course of the river through Island Park is 9 miles. Split Mountain Canyon is 8 miles long. The highest crags on its walls reach an altitude above the river of from 2,500 to 2,700 feet. In these canyons cedars only are found on the walls. The distance by river from the foot of Split Mountain Canyon to the mouth of the Uinta is 67 miles.
The light is about the same as that at the bottom of a narrow street flanked by very high buildings. The walls may sometimes be gloomy from their colour, or may seem so from the circumstances under which one views them, but aside from the fact that any deep, shut-in valley or canyon may become oppressive, there is nothing specially gloomy about a deep canyon.
At a sign from Sru, Nalilc and the boy Toka, followed by the dogs, went off towards the head of the canyon, so as to drive down to the old man and myself any pigs which might be feeding above, whilst we slipped quietly down the side of the spur to the bank of the rivulet. I had my Snider.
There came an awful burst of flame from Mount Hood. Burning cinders and scoria lit up the eastern horizon like a fountain of fire. Then down from the great canyon of the Columbia, from the heart of the Cascade Range, broke a mighty thundering sound, as if half a mountain had fallen. Drowning for a moment the roar of the volcano, the deep echo rolled from crag to crag, from hill to hill.
Without the canyon, upon the mesa, and about half a mile back of the bluff, upon the north side, are the ruins of the Pueblo Alto, constructed of stone on three sides of a court, like those before described.
In the morning he stole a march on the sun, for he had finished breakfast when its first rays caught him, and he was climbing the wall of the canyon where it crumbled away and gave footing. From the outlook at the top he found himself in the midst of loneliness. As far as he could see, chain after chain of mountains heaved themselves into his vision.
So when Steele arrived at the Rapids he gathered the stampeders together and said: "There are many of your countrymen who have said that the Mounted Police make the laws as they go along, and I am going to do so now for your own good, therefore the directions that I give shall be carried out strictly and they are these: Corporal Dixon, who thoroughly understands this work, will be in charge here and be responsible to me for the proper management of the passage of the Canyon and White Horse Rapids.
But this canyon seemed to waken like an old man, with rheum and stiffness of the joints, with heaviness, and a dull, malignant mind. She crouched against the wall while the stars faded, and thought what courage the early races must have had to endure so much for the little they got out of life. At last a kind of hopefulness broke in the air.
This canyon, Ives, says was a "scene of such imposing grandeur as he had never before witnessed," yet it is only a harbinger of the greater sublimity extending along the water above for a thousand miles.
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