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Here, too, the curve of learning at first rises quickly and then more and more slowly. Of course the usual fluctuations in the growth of the ability can also be found, and above all the irregular periods of rest in which the learning itself does not progress, for some of these so-called plateaus which lie between the end of one ascent and the beginning of the next may cover a month and more.
This ravine lay, of course, directly ahead of us as we entered; and its smooth, lawn-like surface, swelling gradually upwards towards the mountain in the rear and the plateaus on each side, formed a truly lovely picture under any circumstances, and especially to us who had, within the last hour, been battling with a stormy sea.
We heard the rippling song of some meadow-larks this day, the only birds of this species we remember having seen on the Western plateaus. All these ranches were laid out in true Mormon style, that is, squared off in sections, fenced, and planted with shade-trees before being worked. The roads are usually wide and the streets exceptionally so.
This is the case also south of the end of the High Plateaus where, stepping down the great terraces, we arrive at the region immediately adjacent to the Grand Canyon, composed of four plateaus, three of them of mesa character, the Shewits, Uinkaret, Kanab, and Kaibab; and up at the head of Marble Canyon a fifth, the Paria, while still farther to the north-eastward is the Kaiparowitz.
If the land then stood at its present height above sea level, and if the average slope of the ice were no more than ten feet to the mile, a slope so gentle that the eye could not detect it and less than half the slope of the interior of the inland ice of Greenland, the ice plateaus about Hudson Bay must have reached a thickness of at least ten thousand feet.
In the solitude of night, with the hum of the great city rising below her at times even in theatres or crowded assemblies of men and women she forgot herself, and again stood in the weird brilliancy of that moonlight night in mute worship at the foot of that slowly-rising mystic altar of piled terraces, hanging forests, and lifted plateaus that climbed forever to the lonely skies.
Thus we penetrated gradually deeper and deeper into this wild country; through low mountains, over bush-clad plains, into thorn jungles, down wide valleys, over hill-divided plateaus. Late in the afternoon we would make camp. Sometimes we had good water; more often not. In the evening the throb of distant drums and snatches of intermittent wailing song rose and fell with the little night breezes.
East and west thick masses hid all vision; immediately at our feet the clouds filled the lower canyons below the plateaus, with a glorious, fleecy, silvery white, that tempted one to walk upon it into the realms of fairyland and wonder.
The stream is still quiet, and we glide along through a strange, weird, grand region. The landscape everywhere, away from the river, is of rock cliffs of rock, tables of rock, plateaus of rock, terraces of rock, crags of rock ten thousand strangely carved forms; rocks everywhere, and no vegetation, no soil, no sand. In long, gentle curves the river winds about these rocks.
In the circumstances there was nothing for it but a fresh venture, and, remounting, the Indian led the boy ten miles farther north to where the plains stretched in a succession of magnificent plateaus, toward the Sleepy Cat Mountains. "We are in real Sioux country now," observed Scott, as he again dismounted. "And we are as likely now to uncover a war party as a herd of antelope."
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