run the place, a fall of about
eighty feet in the third of a mile, or give up the descent. So they got
into their boats and started on the smooth waters, so soon shattered
into raging billows. Though filled with water, the boats all rode
successfully and came out below crowned with success. Often a rapid is
greatly augmented by enormous boulders which have been washed into the
river from some side canyon, and, acting like a dam, block the water
up and cause it to roar and fret tenfold more. Black and dismal is this
granite gorge; sharp and terrible the rapids, whose sheeted foam becomes
fairly iridescent by contrast. The method of working around some of the
worst places is illustrated well by the following extract:

"We land and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall. It seems
possible to let down with lines, at least part of the way, from point
to point, along the right-hand wall. So we make a portage over the first
rocks, and find footing on some boulders below. Then we let down one
of the boats to the end of her line, when she reaches a corner of the
projecting rock, to which one of the men clings and steadies her, while
I examine an eddy below. I think we can pass the other boats down by us,
and catch them in the eddy. This is soon done and the men in the boats
in the eddy pull us to their side. On the shore of this little eddy
there is about two feet of gravel beach above water. Standing on this
beach, some of the men take a line of the little boat and let it drift
down against another projecting angle. Here is a little shelf on which
a man from my boat climbs, and a shorter line is passed to him, and he
fastens the boat to the side of the cliff. Then the second one is let
down, bringing the line of the third. When the second boat is tied up,
the two men standing on the beach above spring into the last boat, which
is pulled up alongside ours. Then we let down the boats, for twenty-five
or thirty yards, by walking along the shelf, landing them again in
the mouth of a side canyon. Just below this there is another pile of
boulders, over which we make another portage. From the foot of these
rocks we can climb to another shelf, forty or fifty feet above the
water. On this bench we camp for the night. We find a few sticks, which
have lodged in the rocks. It is raining hard, and we have no shelter,
but kindle a fire and have our supper. We sit on the rocks all night,
wrapped in our ponchos, getting what sleep we can."