There was no vegetation, "nothing but bare and barren rocks of rich and varied colours shimmering in the sunlight.

Scattered over the plain were thousands of the fantastically formed buttes to which I have referred...
pyramids, domes, towers, columns, spires of every conceivable form and size." There were also multitudes of canyons, ramifying in every direction, "deep, dark, and ragged, impassable to everything but the winged bird." At the nearest point was the canyon of the Grand, while four miles to the south another great gorge was discerned joining it, which their Amerind guides pronounced to be that of Green River.

Finding it utterly impossible for them to reach this place, they returned.
Thus, after all these years of endeavour, the mighty Colorado foamed away amidst this terrible environment as if no human element yet existed in the world.

And as it continued to baffle all attempts to probe its deeper mysteries, the dread of it and the fear of it grew and grew, till he who suggested that a man might pass through the bewildering chasms and live, was regarded as light-headed.

Then came the awful war of the Rebellion, and for several years little thought was bestowed on the problem.* * The troops that were so foolishly and feebly sent against the Mormons in 1857 had some experience in Green River Valley, but it was not directly connected with this story and I will not introduce an account of it here.
Some few prospectors for mineral veins began investigations in the neighbourhood of the lower part of the Grand Canyon, and the gorge was entered from below, about 1864, by O.D.Gass and three other men.