that Thou art mindful of him!"

My own mind is so confused that I hardly know where to commence in
making a clear record of what is at this moment floating past my mental
vision. I cannot confine myself to a bare description of the falls of
the Yellowstone alone, for these two great cataracts are but one feature
in a scene composed of so many of the elements of grandeur and
sublimity, that I almost despair of giving to those who on our return
home will listen to a recital of our adventures, the faintest conception
of it. The immense cañon or gorge of rocks through which the river
descends, perhaps more than the falls, is calculated to fill the
observer with feelings of mingled awe and terror. This chasm is
seemingly about thirty miles in length. Commencing above the upper fall,
it attains a depth of two hundred feet where that takes its plunge, and
in the distance of half a mile from that point to the verge of the lower
fall, it rapidly descends with the river between walls of rock nearly
six hundred feet in vertical height, to which three hundred and twenty
feet are added by the fall. Below this the wall lines marked by the
descent of the river grow in height with incredible distinctness, until
they are probably two thousand feet above the water. There is a
difference of nearly three thousand feet in altitude between the surface
of the river at the upper fall and the foot of the cañon. Opposite Mount
Washburn the cañon must be more than half a vertical mile in depth. As
it is impossible to explore the entire cañon, we are unable to tell
whether the course of the river through it is broken by other and larger
cataracts than the two we have seen, or whether its continuous descent
alone has produced the enormous depth to which it has attained. Rumors
of falls a thousand feet in height have often reached us before we made
this visit. At all points where we approached the edge of the cañon the
river was descending with fearful momentum through it, and the rapids