amination; but such a
portage would be impracticable for us, and we must run the rapid, or
abandon the river. There is no hesitation. We step into our boats, push
off, and away we go, first on smooth but swift water, then we strike a
glassy wave, and ride to its top, down again into the trough, up again
on a higher wave, and down and up on waves higher and still higher,
until we strike one just as it curls back, and a breaker rolls over our
little boat. Still, on we speed, shooting past projecting rocks, till
the little boat is caught in a whirlpool, and spun around several times.
At last we pull out again into the stream, and now the other boats have
passed us. The open compartment of the _Emma Dean_ is filled with water,
and every breaker rolls over us. Hurled back from a rock, now on this
side, now on that, we are carried into an eddy, in which we struggle for
a few minutes, and are then out again, the breakers still rolling over
us. Our boat is unmanageable, but she cannot sink, and we drift down
another hundred yards, through breakers; how, we scarcely know. We find
the other boats have turned into an eddy at the foot of the fall, and
are waiting to catch us as we come, for the men have seen that our boat
is swamped. They push out as we come near, and pull us in against the
wall. We bail our boat, and on we go again.

The walls, now, are more than a mile in height--a vertical distance
difficult to appreciate. Stand on the south steps of the Treasury
Building, in Washington, and look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the
Capitol Park, and measure this distance overhead, and imagine cliffs to
extend to that altitude, and you will understand what I mean; or, stand
at Canal Street, in New York, and look up Broadway to Grace Church, and
you have about the distance; or, stand at Lake Street Bridge in Chicago,
and look down to the Central Depot, and you have it again.

A thousand feet of this is up through granite crags, then steep slopes
and perpendicular cliffs rise, one above another, to the summit. The
gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, with
crags and angular projections on the walls, which, cut in many places by
side canons, seem to be a vast wilderness of rocks. Down in these grand,
gloomy depths we glide, ever listening, for the mad waters keep up their
roar; ever watching, ever peering ahead, for the narrow canon is
winding, and the river is closed in so that we can see but a few
hundred y