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There were three of us, and probably we were among the first whites to go there. Powell the autumn after the men were killed went to the Uinkaret Mountains, but did not continue over to the Shewits Plateau. Thompson went there in 1872. *I have since been told that these men were killed near Mt. Dellenbaugh, but my version is as I remember Jacob Hamblin's statement to me in 1872.
On one occasion, when we were coming away from a snowy experience in the Uinkaret Mountains, we were enveloped in a severe flurry one morning soon after starting. When we had gone about a mile and a half, the whole world seemed to terminate. The air was dense with the fast-falling, snowflakes, and all beyond a certain line was white fog, up, down, and sideways.
In consequence I have called this the Ambush Water-pocket.* The guns, clothing, etc., were appropriated by the Shewits, and I believe it was through one of the watches that the facts first leaked out. When I was there they were in an ugly mood and the night before I got to the camp my guide, a Uinkaret, and a good fellow, warned me to be constantly on my guard or they would steal all we had.
Going eastward across the Shiwits Plateau the Hurricane Cliffs are reached, and climbing them we are on the Uinkaret Plateau, which is bounded on the south by the Grand Canyon and on the north by the Vermilion Cliffs, that rise above its northern foot.
Then the land was further degraded, and a third set of coulees was spread still lower down on the flanks, and on these last coulees the black cinder cones stand. So the foundations of the Uinkaret Mountains are of limestones, and these foundations are covered with sheets of lava overlapping from below upward, and the last coulees are decked with cones.
Then other signal fires were kindled on the Pine Valley Mountains, Santa Clara Mountains, and Uinkaret Mountains, so that all the tribes of northern Arizona, southern Utah, southern Nevada, and southern California were warned of the approaching danger; but when the Paru'shapats came nearer, they discovered that it was a fire on one of the great temples; and then they knew that the fire was not kindled by men, for no human being could scale the rocks.
The length of canyon revealed clearly and in detail at Point Sublime is about twenty-five miles in each direction. Towards the northwest the vista terminates behind the projecting mass of Powell's Plateau. But again to the westward may be seen the crests of the upper walls reaching through the Kanab and Uinkaret Plateaus, and finally disappearing in the haze above Seventy-five miles away.
Beyond, in the faraway distance, is to be seen the curve of the Canyon wall, at the great bend of the river, where the granite disappears from the Inner Gorge, and, resting upon the paler blue of the horizon, is the line of the Uinkaret Mountains in Southern Utah, about sixty-five miles away. What a wondrous outlook it is!
Once when we were in the Uinkaret country, Powell came in from a climb to the summit of what he named Mt. Logan, and said he had just seen a fine mountain off to the south-west which he would name after me. Of course I was much pleased at having my name thus perpetuated. The mountain turned out to be the culminating point of the Shewits Plateau.
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.
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