over the country, but nowhere so bad as the tract on both sides of the
Green and Colorado rivers. You may ride fifty miles any way over bare
rock without seeing a blade of grass unless you get down into some of
the valleys, and you may die of thirst with water under your feet."

"How do you mean, Jerry?"

"The rivers there don't act like the rivers in other parts. Instead of
working round the foot of the hills they just go through them. You ride
along on what seems to be a plain, and you come suddenly to a crack that
ain't perhaps twenty or thirty feet across, and you look down, if you
have got head enough to do it, and there, two thousand feet or more
below you, you see a river foaming among rocks. It ain't one river or it
ain't another river as does it; every little stream from the hills cuts
itself its canon and makes its way along till it meets two or three
others, then they go on together, cutting deeper and deeper until they
run into one of the arms of the Green River or the Colorado or the
Grand.

"The Green and the Colorado are all the same river, only the upper part
is called the Green. For about a thousand miles it runs through great
canons. No one has ever gone down them, and I don't suppose anyone ever
will; and people don't know what is the course of the river from the
time it begins this game till it comes out a big river on the southern
plains. You see, the lands are so bad there is no travelling across
them, and the rapids are so terrible that there is no going down them.
Even the Indians never go near the canons if they can help it. I believe
they think the whole thing is the work of an evil spirit."

"But you said some of the valleys had grass?"