It was with
no little surprise that we found all the plates, except a few which
were not uniformly wet and developed unevenly, could be saved. It took
a day and a half to complete all this work.
Marble Canyon was now beginning to narrow up with a steep,
boulder-covered slope on either side, three or four hundred feet high;
with a sheer wall of dark red limestone of equal height directly above
that. There was also a plateau of red sandstone and distant walls
topped with light-coloured rock, the same formations with which we
were familiar in the Grand Canyon. The inner gorge had narrowed from a
thousand feet or more down to four hundred feet, the slope at the
river was growing steeper and gradually disappearing, and each mile of
travel had added a hundred feet or more to the height of the walls.
Soon after resuming our journey that afternoon, the slope disappeared
altogether, and the sheer walls came down close to the water. There
were few places where one could climb out, had we desired to do so.
This hard limestone wall, which Major Powell had named the marble
wall, had a disconcerting way of weathering very smooth and sheer,
with a few ledges and fewer breaks.
We made a short run that day, going over a few rapids, stopping an
hour to make some pictures where an immense rock had fallen from the
cliff above into the middle of the river bed, leaving a forty-foot
channel on one side, and scarcely any on the other.
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