twenty miles of its length, and the
passage through it will tax the endurance of any man. The declivity is
the greatest of the whole river with the exception of the First Granite
Gorge of the Grand Canyon and a portion of Cataract Canyon. A diagram
of it is given on page 57. I have space only to describe one or two
characteristic incidents. The current of the river was extraordinarily
swift; it must have been in some places nearly twenty miles an hour.
The stream averaged about three hundred feet wide. The boats in a rapid
fairly flew along amidst the foam, plunging and rearing in the "tails"
of waves which always terminate rapids of this class. One day about noon
we came shooting down over one of these places, having just run a rather
bad rapid, when we saw only a few hundred yards below an ugly looking
fall. The left wall came down very straight into the water and threw a
deep shadow over it so that we could not tell exactly what was there.
Opposite was a rocky wooded point, and between the two the river bodily
fell away. Altogether it was a beautiful, though a startling picture.
The whole set of the current was towards this drop with headlong fury.
There were no eddies, no slack water of any kind. But we could not do
such a foolhardy thing as to go into it without knowing what it was and
therefore a landing was imperative. Accordingly we headed for the right
bank, and laid to our oars till they bent like straws. We almost reached
the shore. It was only a few feet away, but the relentless current was
hurling us, broadside on, toward the dark rocks where the smooth water
was broken and torn and churned to shreds of snowy foam. There was only
one thing for us to do, if we did not want to run upon the rocks, and
that was to leap overboard, and trust to bringing the boat to a stop by
holding on to the bottom, here not so far down. This was done, and the
depth turned out to be about to our waists; but for a little time the
boat sped on as before. Planting our shoes firmly against the boulders
of the bottom as we slid along, we finally gained the upper hand, and
then it was an easy matter to reach the shore. Hardly had we done this
when the Nell came tearing down in the same fashion. We rushed into the
water as far as we dared, and they pulled with a will till they came to
us, when they all jumped into the water and we tugged the boat ashore,
just in time to plunge in again and help the Canonita in the same
way. Dinner over,