Evening star., 1894-11-03

| side to side as long as you can hear II,
but never seems to reach the bottom
Before this flow was stagnant, or since,
| by some mysterious and mighty force, q
| canon was forged through the lava, and in
the midst of the river Of fire that was, q
| deep green stream of water now flows with
| such silence and sinuosity that the Indians
| called 1t the Snake river, although 1t de-
| serves a better name. 1t rises In the Teton
| mountains of Montana, and taking wide
| sweep of 1000 miles to the southwark flows
| north and west again, and contributes
| with sister streams to form the great Co
| lumbia.
When the Falls Were Discovered.
The river and the falls were discovered
| by Meriwether Lewis. the private secretary
Of Thomas Jefferson, who. in company with
| Capt Clark of the army. explored the
Louisiana purchase that was made from
Napoleon In 1903. The river was originally
called the Lewis Fork of the Columbia, and
appears as such upon some of the old
maps, but when the gold-hunters came
into the country fifty years after they
adopted the title by which 1t was known
to the Indians.
You can see nothing of the falls or the
canon until you come Immediately upon
them. There is no landmark by which they
can be located from the wagon trail except
one solitary cedar tree, which clings to
q crevice in the lava AMI can only be seen
u
land which stretches across the country
for hundreds of miles is IA favorlte winter
range for cattle, as the snowfall Is light,
the climate mild and the bunch grass is
nourishing and herds are driven in from
all the mountains around. 1t is said that
there is a great deal of gold in the soil.
/ saw an old miner who said he got 100
colors for every shovelful;" but there Is no
way of reaching the plain with water.
The Shoshone canon Is about eighteen
miles long and almost regular in its depth
for the entire distance, the greatest alti-
tude of it's walls being 1,220 and the small
est 1850 feet above the water. The walls
are dead black; first a stratum Of granite,
stained by subterranean fires, then q bed
Of packed gravel, upon which lie 700 or 800
feet of lava In regular level layers, Some
poetic person has likened It to 1.-The grave
Of a volcano that has been robbed of Its
dead"
Nature has curiously opened q portal
from the face of the plain to the canon,
Just above the falls, and it is the only
route by which they can be reached. A
wagon road was built by the miners who
discovered the pass about thirty years ago.
Then hundreds Of men were here seeking
gold. A narrow trail was blasted out Of
the side of the cliff and leads to the bot
tom Of the canon over ledges of broken
lava, when 1t enters an almost circular
amphitheater three-fourths of q mile wide
Into this soil has drifted and made q nat
ural platform from which people can view
the falls. The cliffs that surround them
show curious formation-rounded domes of
rock and huge. frowning battlements that
rise 1000 feet like fortresses to protect the
place.
The Flowing River Below.
Below, in the shadows that they cast,
the dignifed river flows solemnly along
until 1t Is divided by dozen or more vast
volcanic rocks which the water has carved
into fantastic shapes, some like domes and
pyramids and some narrow and sharpened
like pillars. Then 1t suddenly plunges down
between them eighty-three feet, then makes
vertical leap 220 feet into great basin
and finally moves on n a still, deep cur
rent into the gloom Of the canon again