Never Give Up In A Babylon (8/4/1869)

Pancho Alphonso: Never Give Up In a Babylon

Today the walls grow higher,
and the canyon much narrower. Monuments are still seen on either side; beautiful glens,
and alcoves, and gorges,
and side canyons are yet found.
After dinner, we find the river making a sudden turn to the northwest, and the whole character of the canyon changed.
The walls are many hundreds
of feet higher, and the rocks
are chiefly variegated shales of beautiful colors---creamy orange above, then bright vermillion, and below, purple and chocolate beds, with green and yellow sands.
We run four miles through this,
wheel again to the west,
and pass into a portion of the canyon where the characteristics are more like those above the bend.
At night we stop at the mouth of a creek coming in from the right.
Here the canyon terminates abruptly in a line of cliffs, which stretches from either side across the river.
--John Wesley Powell
journal entry for August 4, 1869