moccasined feet had toiled, and climbed over the sloping wall to the mesa above.  The ruins in this section were not extensive, like those found in the tributary canyons of the San Juan River, for instance, not a very great distance from here.  Possibly this people stopped here as they travelled back and forth, trading with their cousins to the north; or the dwellings may have been built by the scattered members of the tribe, when their strongholds were assailed by the more warlike tribes that crowded in on them from all sides.

What a story these cliffs could tell!  What a romance they could narrate of various tribes, as distinct from each other as the nations of Europe, crowding each other; and at the last of this inoffensive race, coming from the far south, it may be; driven from pillar to post, making their last stand in this desert land; to perish of pestilence, or to be almost exterminated by the blood-thirsty tribes that surrounded them—­then again, when the tide changed, and a new type of invader travelled from the east, pushing ever to the west, conquering all before them!  But like the sphinx, the cliffs are silent and voiceless as the hillocks and sand-dunes along the Nile, that other desert stream, with a history no more ancient and momentous than this.

That night we camped opposite the ruins of a dredge, sunk in the low water at the edge of the river.  This dredge had once represented the outlay of a great deal of money.  It is conceded by nearly all experts that the sands of these rivers contain gold, but it is of such a fine grain—­what is known as flour gold—­and the expense of saving it is so great, that it has not paid when operated on such a large scale.  A few placers in Glen Canyon have paid individual operators, some of these claims being in gravel deposits from six hundred to eight hundred feet above the present level of the river.

On the following day we again entered deep canyon; sheer for several hundred feet, creamy white above, with a dark red colour in the lower sandstone walls.  That afternoon we passed a small muddy stream flowing from the north, in a narrow, rock-walled canyon.  This was the Escalante River, a stream rising far to the north, named for one of the Spanish priests who had travelled this country, both to the north and the south of this point, as early as the year 1776, about the time when the New England colonists were in the midst of their struggle with the mother country.

Just below the Escalante River, the canyon turned almost directly south, continuing in this general direction for several miles.  A glimpse or two was had of the top of a tree-covered snow-capped peak directly ahead of us, or a little to the southwest.  This could be none other than Navajo Mountain, a peak we could see from the Grand Canyon, and had often talked of climbing, but debated if we could spare the time, now that we were close to it.