NO. 4.

For the Ulah Monthly Magazine.

VIII.

THE KANARRA CANYONS.

SCENE SO wild, so rude as this, Yet so sublime in barrenness,

Ne'er did my wander

ing footsteps press, Wher'er I happ'd to

roam.

Seems that primeval

earthquake's sway Hath rent a strange and shatter'd way Through the rude bosom of the hill; And that each naked precipice, Sable ravine, and dark abyss,

Tells of the outrage still.

The wildest glen but this can show
Some touch of nature's genial glow.
But here-above, around, below,

On mountain or in glen;

Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower,
Nor ought of vegetative power,

The weary eye may ken.

For all its rocks at random thrown,
Black waves, bare crags and banks of stone."

The lines quoted above were written, as all lovers of Walter Scott's poetry know, to describe the wild and gloomy surroundings of Loch Corriskin, Skye, but they are so applicable, from the broadness of their thought, to many other bleak and desolate scenes, that they are almost sure to be those that suggest themselves to one looking

upon

our rugged western cañons. Especially might they have been intended to describe those of Southern Utah; more than all, those of the Kanarra, so exactly do they tell the feelings inspired by those weird defiles.

By the name Kanarra Cañons, I mean those various openings in the steep hills to the east of the town of Kanarra. There are several of them; one or two to the north, in the range, and one or two to the south. Each, of course, has its individual name.

When one writes from memories fifteen years old, it is not easy to go into details. But the places made a profound impression upon me. After that lapse of time, I often find myself thinking about them. And many as are the scenes, and remarkable, that I have looked upon since then, they hold their own among all the mental pictures, and stand out quite distinctly from all the rest.

They are such places as must impress with wonder all those who are moved by the strange in nature.

In a previous number of the MAGAZINE is a picture of the "Temples of the Rio Virgen," the accompanying account being taken from my diary of 1875. From the same I take these

"March 16th.-We passed over, just before reaching Kanarraville, one of the bleakest spots it is possible to conceive on earth. It appeared as if every wind of heaven had forever been beating relentlessly upon it. Johnny, our M. D., said there had been a settlement started there, but that the winds had been too much for it, literally blowing the houses away. Judging from the manner in which the ground seemed to have been swept it was easy for us to believe this true. The wonder is who could ever have thought of starting a settlement in such a place.

"We found Mr. Griffin to be a very cordial man, indeed; and moreover, which was better yet, very anxious to show the remarkable scenes near by. We partook of a light luncheon and then started off toward the hills.

"He was an intelligent man, Mr. Griffin, and an observer. He seemed to sense exactly what we required, and so led us without any preliminaries, to the very spots which, of all others in the locality, we should have picked out to have seen.

"We directed our steps towards the northeast. A slight crevice appeared in the rocks there, but never opening out, one would have thought, into the wild defile that it did. The Secret Pass it might well be called, so cunningly has nature hidden the entrance to it away.

"This entrance was through a narrow gateway, between two square, massive blocks of a light-gray limestone. Immediately after we were in a region of bright-red sandstone, of which the great body of the hills are composed.

"The principal scene in the north defile, about three miles up, is where

ampitheatre, through which the pretty stream comes winding, laughing or singing all the while over the tallen rounded stones, and at the upper end of which there is a monstrous crag of the bright-red sandstone, with snow lying in its upper fissues. A sharp,keen wind, which came from the north-east, caught this snow at times, and carried wreaths of it far out into the air, from side to side of the cañon, and around the huge crag, wreaths or rather veils of finest texture.

"Retracing our steps we emerged from this and went southward a couple of miles to the entrance of the next cañon. The latter differs from its neighbor in the fact that it has no stream running through it, it being. really, like a vast roofless hallway, the perpendicular walls towering hundreds of feets on either hand and so close together at certain points that there is no more than room for the

wagon road that passes between

them.

"We ended our excursion at a point called the Indian Pass. Here the place is haunted by an echo, which answered with startling distinctness to our calls. We heard our foolish words repeated again-up, up, height above height, until they seemed to die away in the sky.

"Indian Pass may be a fanciful name, or it may be such a thing in fact. Mr. Griffin told us it was surely the latter. It is a fissure in the solid rock, starting at right angles to the south, from the main defile. It is a very few feet in width and resembles a flight of stairs, ledge upon ledge, leading up to the mountain tops. As we, of course, stood in the deep shadow, (it was late afternoon, by the time we reached this spot) and the mountain

peaks above were all suffused with sunlight, a deeper meaning might have been gathered from the name. Might it not be that the Indian saw in the place a likeness to the lonely trail to the happy hunting grounds,-to the myjestic way between this and the land of shadows?"

The cañon which furnished the subject for the frontispiece of this number of the MAGAZINE, is the most southerly of all the Kanarras. Another of the jottings will be enough to describe it.

We

"April 4th.-Again we are at the Kanarras, after our long tiring trip to the desert. Johnny found a nice place to camp-sheltered from the wind by a ledge of conglomerate on one side and low, thick trees on the other. were very hungry, so that the evening meal, rather a scanty one it must be said, for our commissary was much depleted. was very welcome. The wind moaned dismally down from the hills all night, and we felt quite cheerless, if not sad.

"The clouds are collecting for a

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storm, I believe. They hang dark and heavily over the red hills. Colburn's Buttes, sometimes called the "Pillars," (a more appropriate name by the way,) appear twice as massive and high as they did in the clear weather. Especially do they appear big when the water-laden clouds stoop so low that they rest upon their tops. Johnny tells us that they have caused many a cloud burst. We would be in rather a bad place if they caused one now.

It

"April 5th.-What more grand and startling than to see the storm clouds thus suddenly discharge their burdens upon the rocky hill sides! or to hear the roar of the wild rushing water. bursts upon the ear with an awful majesty of sound, as though the old hills had found a voice and had begun to tell us tales,-tales of the long ago, before they had found rest, when the suface of the earth rose and fell like waves of the sea, and the giant forces beneath rent it here and there and sent forth columns of flame from the mountain peaks around.

THE works of the Greek poets and philosophers are full of allusions to the beauty and power of music. The Scriptures also laud the divine art. Nevertheless it is more than probable that music was crude and barbaric even in ancient Jerusalem. One rather convincing proof of this is found in the constant desire of the ancients to bring

vast bodies of musicians together. "Play skilfully and with a loud noise," says the psalmist, and Josephus speaks of choruses of 250,000 voices and as many instrumentalists. It is quite probable that the old historian was exaggerating, yet the very statement shows that the ancients desired power above all things in their tonal feasts.

In Greece the same desire for fortissimo obtained, for we read of a young flute player bursting a blood vessel and dying through a herculean. effort to obtain a very loud note, and the voice of a gentleman who took several prizes for his musical attainments in the public games was said to be powerful enough to stun the entire audience.

Of course the ancient music was strongly rhythmic, of this we have absolute proof in the Scriptural allusions to the clapping of hands, and in the description of the regular stamping of the director of the chorus in the ancient Greek theatres. The surest proof of the crudity of ancient music is, however, found in the Greek system of notation, which is utterly inadequate

to represent music of any intricacy. Yet it is not quite certain that we have deciphered this notation correctly, for the works on the subject are by no means explicit and many of them have been destroyed. The excavations in progress at Pompeii may still afford a clue to the music of the ancient world. It must be remembered that two thirds of the city of Pompeii is still under ground, and it is quite possible that the remains of a musical library may yet be discovered there. At present the musical works of Boethius and of Vitruvius only serve to make the darkness of the ancient musical system more cimmerian. But this much can be stated with surety, that it was barbaric in comparison with the system of our own times.