The marvellous country, or, Three years in Arizona and New Mexico.: Containing an authentic history of this wonderful country and its ancient civilization ... together with a full and complete history of the Apache tribe of Indians .../ By Samuel Woodworth Cozzens. Illustrated by more than one hundred engravings.

HO W WE FOUND THEiL.
occasionally a small cedar or scrub oak was to be seen,
firmly rooted in some gray cleft upon their sides. The
ground over which we were travelling had once been the
bed of a mountain stream, and our course was much impeded by the large quantities of stones and small boulders,
that had been worn smooth and round by the action of the
waters. On we went, endeavoring to follow the course of
the Mexican guide, who was now some distance in advance,
the soldiers, with their clumsy cavalry horses, finding it
hard work to make much headway over the stones.
At this point we were approaching a very narrow part
of the cation, where the stream had formerly passed between
two perpendicular walls from one to two hundred feet in
height, and scarcely thirty in width.
As we drew near to it, so smooth were its sides, and so
narrow the passage, it scarcely seemed possible that it was
anything but a huge fissure in the rock, notwithstanding
the guide assured us that the passage through it was feasible.
The cold, gray rocks, towering high above our heads,
entirely bare of foliage, were covered with a dark brown
moss, that gave to the surroundings a most gloomy and
sombre aspect, in addition to which, the masses of sharpcornered rock, round boulders, and smoothly-washed
stones that covered the groumid before and around us,
seemed to offer an almost impassable barrier to the passage
of this most forbidding little canion.
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