ble canyon and the great
gorge of the Grand Canyon.

Tom and I had recovered our equilibrium by the time we were ready to
reembark. We felt reasonably confident of being able to navigate the
gorges which were ahead.

"I shall be glad when we get through with this hilarious and irregular
life," said Tom. "I don't believe any of us would have started if we
could have known what we would have to go through with."

"I would," claimed Jim. "We have to hustle sometimes. But if you had
stayed in the peaceful East you would have probably have gone bathing in
some mill pond and got a cramp and drowned."

"You can't stop long enough in these darned canyons to get drowned,"
growled Tom.

We all laughed heartily at Tom's complaints. He was never so funny as
when he was irritable.

"Another thing," said Tom in conclusion, "I'm not going to give up that
search for treasure till we find it."

About noon of the day we started we saw ahead of us the shining walls of
the greatest chasm that we had yet faced.

"Is that the Grand Canyon itself?" I asked.

"No," said Jim, who had been studying the maps carefully during our last
stop. "That must be the Marble Canyon. The Little Colorado will come in
below there somewhere."

"Is it really marble?" inquired Tom.

"You can see for yourself soon," said Jim.

However, names are deceitful things. It was indeed a marvelous gorge
into which we entered. Where the waves of the river had worked, there
shone a beautiful greyish marble, cut in curious deep lines by the
action of the water, but above the walls were stained a deep red.

There was a massive solidness about this marble canyon that made the
sandstone gorges appear light and airy. The walls rose in places to over
three thousand feet in height.

Sometimes the walls were in thousand-foot terraces, sometimes well nigh
perpendicular, at least so it seemed. It was, with all its grandeur,
only the entrance hall for the Grand Canyon itself. Its peculiarity was
in the sharp thrust out cliffs that rose perpendicularly from the river.

The Little Colorado was well named, for the river itself was but a small
stream, but the narrow gorge by which it entered was impressive. It is
the mingling of the Little Colorado with Marble Canyon that constitutes
the Grand Canyon of the Colorado.

But it in reality is not quite so magically logical as that, since from
miles below the entrance of the Little Colorado, the canyon walls fall
away from