On the River Rolls

July 24.
We examine the rapids below. Large rocks have fallen from the walls—great, angular blocks, which have rolled down the talus, and are strewn along the channel. Among these rocks, in chutes, whirlpools, and great waves, with rushing breakers and foam, the water finds its way, still tumbling down.

We are compelled to make three portages in succession. We stop for the night, only three fourths of a mile below the last camp. A very hard day's work has been done. At evening I sit on a rock by the edge of the river, to look at the water, and listen to its roar.

The waves are rolling, with crests of foam so white they seem almost to give a light of their own. Near by, a chute of water strikes the foot of a great block of limestone, fifty feet high, and the waters pile up against it, and roll back. 

Where there are sunken rocks, the water heaps up in mounds, or even in cones. At a point where rocks come very near the surface, the water forms a chute above, strikes, and is shot up ten or fifteen feet, and piles back in gentle curves, as in a fountain.

Darkness comes. The river tumbles and rolls on.

John Wesley Powell, Exploration of the Colorado River of the West and Its Tributaries, July 24, 1869

See On the River Rolls II