ded a long, glittering trail.
This, where the sunlight struck it, gleamed like an outstretched band
of gold. It was the sinuous Colorado, yellow as the Tiber.

[Illustration: RIPLEY'S BUTTE.]

[Illustration: A BIT OF THE RIVER.]

[Illustration: ON HANCE'S TRAIL.]

One day of our stay here was devoted to making the descent to this
river. It is an undertaking compared with which the crossing of the
Gemmi on a mule is child's play. Fortunately, however, the arduous
trip is not absolutely necessary for an appreciation of the immensity
and grandeur of the scenery. On the contrary, one gains a really
better idea of these by riding along the brink, and looking down at
various points on the sublime expanse. Nevertheless, a descent into
the Canon is essential for a proper estimate of its details, and one
can never realize the enormity of certain cliffs and the extent of
certain valleys, till he has crawled like a maimed insect at their
base and looked thence upward to the narrowed sky. Yet such an
investigation of the Canon is, after all, merely like going down from
a balloon into a great city to examine one of its myriad streets,
since any gorge we may select for our descending path is but a tiny
section of a labyrinth. That which is unique and incomparable here
is the view from the brink; and when the promised hotel is built upon
the border of the Canon, visitors will be content to remain for days
at their windows or on the piazzas, feasting their souls upon a scene
always sublime and sometimes terrible.

[Illustration: A VISION OF SUBLIMITY.]

Nevertheless, desirous of exploring a specimen of these chasms (as we
often select for minute examination a single painting out of an
entire picture gallery) we made the descent to the Colorado by means
of a crooked scratch upon a mountain side, which one might fancy had
been blazed by a zigzag flash of lightning. As it requires four hours
to wriggle down this path, and an equal amount of time to wriggle up,
I spent the greater part of a day on what a comrade humorously styled
the "quarter-deck of a mule." A square, legitimate seat in the
saddle was usually impossible, so steep was the incline; and hence,
when going down, I braced my feet and lay back on the haunches of the
beast, and, in coming up, had to lean forward and clutch the pommel,
to keep from sliding off, as a human avalanche, on the head of the
next in line. In many places, however, riding was impossible, and we
wer