A View Of The Adjacent Country (8/2/1869)

Telemann: Concerto for Mandolin, Hammered Dulcimer and Harp

Bach: Oboe Concerto

We still keep our camp
in Music Temple today.
I wish to obtain a view of the adjacent country, if possible; so, early in the morning, the men take me across the river, and I pass along by the foot of the cliff half a mile upstream, and then climb first up broken ledges, then two or three hundred yards up a smooth, sloping rock, and then pass out on a narrow ledge.
Still, I find I have not attained an altitude from which I can overlook the region outside of the canyon; and so I descend into a little gulch, and climb again to a higher ridge, all the way along naked sandstone, and at last
I reach a point of commanding view. I can look several miles up the San Juan, and a long distance up the Colorado; and away to the northwest
I can see the Henry Mountains; to the northeast, the Sierra La Sal; to the southeast, unknown mountains; and to the southwest, the meandering of the canyon. Then I return to the bank of the river.
We sleep again in Music Temple.
--John Wesley Powell
journal entry for August 2, 1869