. Sights and scenes in Idaho and Montana for tourists .. . eed from theground beneath our feet. Leaving the cavalry tobring up the wagon, my friend and I galloped on, andwere quickly upon the edge of the canon wall. We looked down into a broad, circular excavation,three-quarters of a mile in diameter, and nearly 1,000feet deep. East and north, over the edges of thecanon, we looked across miles and miles of the SnakePlain, far on to the blue boundary mountains. The wallof the gorge opposite us, like the cliff at our feet,sank in perpendicular bluffs, nearly to the level of theriver, the broad e
. Sights and scenes in Idaho and Montana for tourists .. . eed from theground beneath our feet. Leaving the cavalry tobring up the wagon, my friend and I galloped on, andwere quickly upon the edge of the canon wall. We looked down into a broad, circular excavation,three-quarters of a mile in diameter, and nearly 1,000feet deep. East and north, over the edges of thecanon, we looked across miles and miles of the SnakePlain, far on to the blue boundary mountains. The wallof the gorge opposite us, like the cliff at our feet,sank in perpendicular bluffs, nearly to the level of theriver, the broad excavation being covered by roughpiles of black lava and rounded domes of rock. Ahorizon as level as the sea; a circling wall, whosesharp edges were here and there battlemented in huge,fortress-like masses; a broad river, smooth and un-ruffled, flowing quietly in the middle of the scene, andthen plunging into a labyrinth of rocks, tumbling overa precipice 220 feet high, and moving westward in astill, deep current, to disappear behind a blackpromontory. 11. It is a strange, savage scene—a monotony of paleblue sky, olive and gray stretches of desert, frowningwalls of jetty lava, deep beryl-green river stretches,reflecting here and there the intense solemnity of thecliffs, and in the centre a dazzling sheet of foam. Inthe early morning light, the shadows of the cliffs werecast over half the basin, defining themselves in sharpoutline here and there on the river. Upon the foamof the cataract, one point of the rock cast a blueshadow. Where the river flowed around the westernpromontory, it was wholly in shadow and of a deepsea-green. A scanty growth of trees fringed the brinkof the lower cliffs overhanging the river. Dead bar-renness is the whole sentiment of the scene. Themere suggestion of trees clinging here and there alongthe walls serves rather to heighten than to relieve theforbidding gloom of the place. Nor does the flashingwhiteness where the river tears itself among the rock
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1890, bookidsightsscenes, bookyear1892