they knew that there was almost every chance
against the possibility of a boat's living in such a seething
current, which is, at intervals, punctured with a multitude of
tusk-like rocks, tortured into rapids, twisted into whirlpools, or
broken by falls; while in the event of shipwreck they could hope for
little save naked precipices to cling to for support. Moreover, after
a heavy rain the Colorado often rises here fifty or sixty feet under
the veritable cataracts of water which, for miles, stream directly
down the perpendicular walls, and make of it a maddened torrent
wilder than the rapids of Niagara. All honor, then, to Powell and his
comrades who braved not alone the actual dangers thus described, but
stood continually alert for unknown perils, which any bend in the
swift, snake-like river might disclose, and which would make the
gloomy groove through which they slipped a black-walled _oubliette_,
or gate to Acheron.

[Illustration: A CABIN ON THE TRAIL.]

[Illustration: A HALT.]

[Illustration: AT THE BOTTOM.]

[Illustration: TAKING LUNCH NEAR THE RIVER.]

[Illustration: BESIDE THE COLORADO.]

If any river in the world should be regarded with superstitious
reverence, it is the Colorado, for it represents to us, albeit in a
diminished form, the element that has produced the miracle of the
Arizona Canon,--water. Far back in the distant Eocene Epoch of our
planet's history, the Colorado was the outlet of an inland sea which
drained off toward the Pacific, as the country of northwestern
Arizona rose; and the Grand Canon illustrates, on a stupendous scale,
the system of erosion which, in a lesser degree, has deeply furrowed
the entire region. At first one likes to think of the excavation of
this awful chasm as the result of some tremendous cataclysm of
Nature; but, in reality, it has all been done by water, assisted, no
doubt, by the subtler action of the winds and storms in the
disintegration of the monster cliffs, which, as they slowly crumbled
into dust, were carried downward by the rains, and, finally, were
borne off by the omnivorous river to the sea.

[Illustration: MONSTER CLIFFS, AND A NOTCH IN THE CANON WALL.]

[Illustration: MILES OF INTRA-CANONS.]

But though, at first, these agents do not seem as forceful and
extraordinary as a single terrible catastrophe, the slow results thus
gained are even more impressive. For what an appalling lapse of time
must have been necessary to cut down and remove la