perpendicular ascent to begin with, for the ground rises more
than the river drops. Stately pine woods fringe either lip of
the gorge, which is the gorge of the Yellowstone. You'll find all
about it in the guide books.

All that I can say is that without warning or preparation I
looked into a gulf seventeen hundred feet deep, with eagles and
fish-hawks circling far below. And the sides of that gulf were
one wild welter of color--crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber,
honey splashed with port wine, snow white, vermilion, lemon, and
silver gray in wide washes. The sides did not fall sheer, but
were graven by time, and water, and air into monstrous heads of
kings, dead chiefs--men and women of the old time. So far below
that no sound of its strife could reach us, the Yellowstone River
ran a finger-wide strip of jade green.

The sunlight took those wondrous walls and gave fresh hues to
those that nature had already laid there.

Evening crept through the pines that shadowed us, but the full
glory of the day flamed in that canyon as we went out very
cautiously to a jutting piece of rock--blood-red or pink it
was--that overhung the deepest deeps of all.

Now I know what it is to sit enthroned amid the clouds of sunset
as the spirits sit in Blake's pictures. Giddiness took away all
sensation of touch or form, but the sense of blinding color
remained.

When I reached the mainland again I had sworn that I had been