The forms of erosion were as varied as the rock itself, each different-coloured rock stratum presenting a different surface.  In one place the surface was broken into rounded forms like the backs of a herd of elephants.  In others we saw reproductions of images, carved by the drifting sands—­a Diana, with uplifted arm, as large as the Goddess of Liberty; a Billiken on a throne with a hundred worshippers bowed around.  Covered with nature-made ruins and magnificent rock structures, as this section is, it is not entirely without utility.  It is a grazing country.  Great numbers of contented cattle, white-faced, with red and white, or black and white patches of colour on their well-filled hides, were found in the open spaces between the sheer-walled cliffs.  Dusty, well-beaten trails led down through these wide canyons, trails which undoubtedly gained the top of the level, rocky plateau a few miles back from the river.  As is usual in a cattle country at the end of the summer season, the bunch-grass, close to the water supply—­which in this case happened to the river—­was nibbled close to the roots.  The cattle only came here to drink, then travelled many miles, no doubt, to the better grazing on the upper plateaus.  The sage, always gray, was grayer still, with dust raised by many passing herds.  There was a band of range horses too, those splendid wild-eyed animals with kingly bearing, and wind-blown tails and manes, lean like a race-horse, strong-muscled and tough-sinewed, pawing and neighing, half defiant and half afraid of the sight of men, the only thing alive to which they pay tribute.

It is a never ending source of wonder, to those unacquainted with the semi-arid country, how these animals can exist in a land which, to them, seems utterly destitute and barren.  To many such, a meadow carpeted with blue grass or timothy is the only pasture on which grazing horses or grazing cattle can exist; the dried-out looking tufts of bunch-grass, scattered here and there or sheltered at the roots of the sage, mean nothing; the grama-grass hidden in the grease-wood is unnoticed or mistaken for a weed.

But if the land was bare of verdure, the rock saved it from being monotonous.  Varied in colour, the red rock predominated—­blood-red at mid-day, orange-tinted at sunset, with gauze-like purple shadows, and with the delicate blue outlines always found in the Western distances; such a land could never be called uninteresting.

The banks of the stream, here in the open, were always green.  From an elevation they appeared like two emerald bands through a land of red, bordering a stream the tint of the aged pottery found along its shores.  We were continually finding new trees and strange shrubs.  Beside the cottonwoods and the willows there was an occasional wild-cherry tree; in the shrubs were the service-berry, and the squaw-berry, with sticky, acid-tasting fruit.  The cacti were small, and excepting the prickly pear were confined nearly altogether to a small “pin-cushion” cactus, growing a little larger as we travelled south.  And always in the mornings when out of the deep canyons the moist, pungent odour of the sage greeted our nostrils.  It is inseparable from the West.  There is no stuffy germ-laden air there, out in the sage; one is glad to live, simply to breathe it in and exhale and breathe again.