The evening Argus. [volume] (Rock Island, Ill.) 1861-1871, 1870-02-18
THE REGIONS Of WONDER.
x8H OANo1gO or FEE 0ox
01ADo.
lecture Of Dr.. :. ". Powell.

count of the daring achievement OF his ex
ploring party in threading the mazes OF the
Canons of the Colorado. He was intro
duced by E. ". Spencer, the President OF
the Y. NJ. C. A., under whose auspices the
lecture was given. Near the desks hung
two maps on the BAumgarten plan of partly
pictorial partly typographical representation
of the Country, which conveyed q graphic
idea of the intricate labyrinth of
deep narrow gorges that cut up
the valley of the Colorado, and to these the
lecturer turned, and plunged into the middle
of his narrative, without any Pren%nL
The Colorado, he said, was for"'
;,,c,;on Of the Green and Grand r'Vers' ana
=. :. of,,ouoh like shape, $50 miles
,-.d ,oo miles broad, covering an area
.,n.I in size to the five great States Of Hi
no;,. Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Mis-
souri,, and is bounded east, north and west
by snow clad peaks 10000 to $4,000 feet
above the level of the sea. The upper two
thirds Of this area is about 5000 feet above
the level of the sea. The Colorado river is
fed from the mountain SUBMITS that form
its basin during the winter, the trees on the
mountain side and the gorges and clefts are
filled and covered with snow. In the spring
this melts, and millions of tiny rivulets
dash down the mountain sides. These
unite in ten thousand creeks which form q
hundred Towing rivers, and joining make
the torrent Colorado which has cut its way
through beds of granite and sand stone q
thousand feet in depth, through which gorge
il rosrs and tumbles in q succession of cats-
racts till it reaches the Gulf of California
The Green river takes its rise from the SHOWS
of the Wind River Mountains. and
the Grand from Grand Park, Q
grove OF park among the peaks
about l59 acres in extent. The lecturer
then gave his audience an idea of the won
derful gorges made by trickling rivlets Of
water that flow into the Green and the Grand
and still others that flow into these rivulets
~hich also have their rsmifcations forming
as it were q branching net work of canons
thousands of feet in depth Through this
region Of wonder aud incalculsble tolls and
dangers the lecturer and the exploring par
~ under his charge went. he described
the boats made in Chicago for the expedi
ton as having three compartments two
of which were water tight, SO
that though one compartment sprung
leak, the remaining one would buoy the boat
up. Beginning at the conjunction Of the
Grand and Green rivers, himself and his
party of nine men passed through these
canons to the mouth of the Virgin river
their objective point. The length of the
Colorado was nine hundred and twenty-five
miles, the fall being over six thousand feet
in that distance, infinitely greater than any
other Of the large rivers of the United
States. The volume of water Was about the
same as the Monongehels, between Pitts
burgh and Cincinnati. At some portions
there is descent OF $50 feet to the mile,
forming series Of falls, sbutes and cata.
racts indescribable in their beauty and
grandeur.
We have not space for q description of the
infinite grandure OF these canons as it fell
from the lips of Major Powell. He himself
seemed 70 struggle with difficulty TO convey
an ADEQUATE conception of the awful magni-
6cence of these pillars of vermilGon and
orange sandstone, and white and gray lime
stone varying from 1000 feet to one mile
in height Of miles gone over with no
visible world except the towering naked
rocks, the river roaring and foaming around
them, and a narrow strip of blue sky
seen through the cliff of the
canon thousand feet above; the
iunumerable great amphitheatres caused
BY the crumbling away of the softer friable
rocks below. srched over BY the harder
strata. with q narrow skyliehs at the summit
of the dome, through which the water had
,rickled, TO form the immense cham Der, some
Of which were go large that q regiment
could encamp in them the pillars of basalt
with senblsnces of turreted castles, of gigsn-
tic cathedrsls, of armies of Ti,ans At the
SUNNI, of each; the occasional little springs
bubbling out, bedecked with verdant
margin of ferns, MOSES and lverworts, the
only vegetation that grew in this
cyclopean region; the brooks flow
ing into the main stream, faint
ed with sulphuertted hydrogen, the AMI.
mated life which consisted only of snakes,
toAds and lizards, all these together formed
materials with which Dante would feel
himself unequal to work and which
transcribed even his divine cspa
biity of expression. Ma or P. has q decid
eddy happy method of making geology plain
to the meanest conception. He illustrated
the inequality Of the esrths surface by COW
ering a small globe lin imagina,ionl with
patches of wax, adjacent and overlapping
each other, and then supposing the globe to
grow smaller, and the result on the wax
would be to shrivel it into wrinkles.
This was the basis of the geological theory,
Of pication, viz the cooling and contraction
o. the earth's center. He said that the
clouds are the great workers OF nature, and
that they made the mountains and the val
leys, and created the canons OF Colorado,
which the water could not have worn
through the solid sandstone in less than six
ty millions of years. He has mapped,
named, and subdivided the canons of Colo.
RADIO: Mound Canon, Monument Canon
CAtarac, Canon, Millecrag Bend, ETC., of all
of which one can get but faint conception
even from the eloquent description OF the
eyewitness Major Powell.
The FERRY REMoYAL-AND WASHINGTON
SrREEr.-The discontinued sore head Repub-
licans who expected to make capital out of
his matter probably think the voter all rs big
fools as they are themselves. If they are so