Ruin was there and desolation and decay. The meaning of the ages
was flung at me. A man became nothing. But when I gazed across that
sublime and majestic wilderness, in which the Grand Canyon was only a
dim line, I strangely lost my terror and something came to me across
the shining spaces.

Then Nas ta Bega and Wetherill began the descent of the slope, and the
rest of us followed. No sign of a trail showed where the base of the
slope rolled out to meet the green plain. There was a level bench a
mile wide, then a ravine, and then an ascent, and after that, rounded
ridge and ravine, one after the other, like huge swells of a monstrous
sea. Indian paint brush vied in its scarlet hue with the deep magenta
of cactus. There was no sage. Soap weed and meager grass and a bunch
of cactus here and there lent the green to that barren, and it was
green only at a distance.

Nas ta Bega kept on at a steady gait. The sun climbed. The wind rose
and whipped dust from under the mustangs. There is seldom much talk
on a ride of this nature. It is hard work and everybody for himself.
Besides, it is enough just to see; and that country is conducive to
silence. I looked back often, and the farther out on the plain we rode
the higher loomed the plateau we had descended; and as I faced ahead
again, the lower sank the red-domed and castled horizon to the fore.

It was a wild place we were approaching. I saw piñon patches under
the circled walls. I ceased to feel the dry wind in my face. We were
already in the lee of a wall. I saw the rock squirrels scampering to
their holes. Then the Indians disappeared between two rounded corners
of cliff.