He studied the chasm, wishing that they could have some way of cutting the quartz crystals and making binoculars. It was a long way to look with the naked eye.⁠ ⁠…

Here and there the chasm thrust out arms into the plateau. All the arms were short, however, and even at their heads the cliffs were vertical. The morning shadows prevented a clear view of much of the chasm and he could see no sign of the red-stained strata that they were searching for.

In the southwest corner of the chasm, far away and almost imperceptible, he saw a faint cloud rising up from the chasm’s floor. It was impossible to tell what it was and it faded away as he watched.

Barber saw it, too, and said, “It looked like smoke. Do you suppose there could be people⁠—or some kind of intelligent things⁠—living down there?”

“It might have been the vapor from hot springs, condensed by the cool morning air,” he said. “Whatever it was, we’ll look into it when we get there.”

The climb down the steep slope into the chasm was swifter than that up the canyon but no more pleasant. Carrying a heavy pack down such a grade exerted a torturous strain upon the backs of the legs.

The heat increased steadily as they descended. They reached the floor of the valley the next day and the noonday heat was so great that Humbolt wondered if they might not have trapped themselves into what the summer would soon transform into a monstrous oven where no life at all could exist. There could never be any choice, of course⁠—the mountains were passable only when the weather was hot.

The floor of the valley was silt, sand and gravel⁠—they would find nothing there. They set out on a circuit of the chasm’s walls, following along close to the base.