these have already poured forth millions of dollars, while others
await a discoverer. On the river itself gold is found in the sands;
and the small alluvial bottoms that occur in Glen Canyon, and a few
gravel bars in the Grand, have been somewhat profitably worked,
though necessarily on a small scale. The granite walls of the Grand
Canyon bear innumerable veins, but as prospecting is there so
difficult it will be many a long year before the best are found. The
search for mineral veins has done much to make the farther parts
known, just as the earlier search for beaver took white men for the
first time into the fastnesses of the great mountains, and earlier
the effort to save the souls of the natives marked their main trails
into the wilderness.

This sketch of the Basin of the Colorado is most inadequate, but the
scope of this volume prevents amplification in this direction. These
few pages, however, will better enable the reader to comprehend the
labours of the padres, the trappers, and the explorers, some account
of whose doings is presented in the following chapters.*

* In connection with the subject of erosion and corrasion the reader
is advised to study the following works, which are the standards: The
Exploration of the Colorado of the West, and the Geology of the Uinta
Mountains, by J. W. Powell; The Henry Mountains, by G. K. Gilbert;
The Geology of the High Plateaus of Utah, and The Tertiary History of
the Grand Canyon District, by C. E. Dutton.



CHAPTER IV