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Covered with nature-made ruins and magnificent rock structures, as this section is, it is not entirely without utility. It is a grazing country. Great numbers of contented cattle, white-faced, with red and white, or black and white patches of colour on their well-filled hides, were found in the open spaces between the sheer-walled cliffs.
The Colorado River rises in the heart of the continent on the dividing ranges and ridges between the two oceans, drains thousands of snowy mountains through narrow or spacious valleys, and thence through canyons of every color, sheer-walled and deep, all of which seem to be represented in this one grand canyon of canyons.
The great drawback to this course was the fact that Ha Va Su Canyon, sheer-walled, deep, and narrow, contained a number of waterfalls, one of them about 175 feet high. The precipice over which it fell was nothing but a mineral deposit from the water, building higher every year.
About the middle of the afternoon we were directly opposite a noble group of glaciers some ten in number, flowing from a chain of crater-like snow fountains, guarded around their summits and well down their sides by jagged peaks and cols and curving mural ridges. From each of the larger clusters of fountains, a wide, sheer-walled canyon opens down to the sea.
Besides these common after-storm avalanches that are to be found not only in the Yosemite but in all the deep, sheer-walled canyon of the Range there are two other important kinds, which may be called annual and century avalanches, which still further enrich the scenery. The only place about the Valley where one may be sure to see the annual kind is on the north slope of Clouds' Rest.
It was only a short time until the Bear Cat followed its trail of the previous Saturday, and, rushing across the stream, stopped at its former resting place, while Linda and Donald sat looking at the sheer-walled little room before them. "I can see," said Linda, "a stronger tinge in the green. There are more flowers in the carpet. There is more melody in the birds' song.
The summits and connecting ridges are mere blades and points, ground sharp by the glaciers that descended on both sides to the main valleys. From one standpoint I counted nine of these glacial channels with their moraines sweeping grandly out to the plains to deep sheer-walled neve-fountains at their heads, making a most vivid picture of the last days of the Ice Period.
It lies in a deep, sheer-walled basin about seven thousand feet above the level of the sea, supposed to be the crater of an extinct volcano. Oregon as it is today is a very young country, though most of it seems old. Contemplating the Columbia sweeping from forest to forest, across plain and desert, one is led to say of it, as did Byron of the ocean,
Sweeping on over ridge and valley, these noble trees extend a continuous belt from end to end of the range, only slightly interrupted by sheer-walled cañons at intervals of about fifteen and twenty miles. Here the great burly brown bears delight to roam, harmonizing with the brown boles of the trees beneath which they feed.
The Colorado River rises in the heart of the continent on the dividing ranges and ridges between the two oceans, drains thousands of snowy mountains through narrow or spacious valleys, and thence through cañons of every color, sheer-walled and deep, all of which seem to be represented in this one grand cañon of cañons.
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