by the Colorado, beginning at the top of the groove with
hundreds of feet of limestone, and closing at the bottom with a thousand
feet of granite. Here, too, as in many other wonder-spots of the American
desert, nature's sculpture is rivalled by her painting. Bluish-gray
limestone, containing corals; mottled limestone, charged with slates,
flint, and chalcedony; red, brown, and blue limestone, mixed with red,
green, and yellow shales; sandstone of all tints, white, brown, ochry,
dark red, speckled and foliated; coarse silicious sandstone, and red
quartzose sandstone beautifully veined with purple; layers of
conglomerate, of many colored shales, argillaceous iron, and black oxide
manganese; massive black and white granite, traversed by streaks of quartz
and of red sienite; coarse red felspathic granite, mixed with large plates
of silver mica; such is the masonry and such the frescoing.

Through this marvellous museum our three spectators wandered in hourly
peril of death. The Afreets of the waters and the Afreets of the rocks,
guarding the gateway which they had jointly builded, waged incessant
warfare with the intruders. Although the current ran five miles an hour,
it was a lucky day when the boat made forty miles. Every evening the
travellers must find a beach or shelf where they could haul up for the
night. Darkness covered destruction, and light exposed dangers. The
bubble-like nature of the boat afforded at once a possibility of easy
advance and of instantaneous foundering. Every hour that it floated was a
miracle, and so they grimly and patiently understood it.

A few days in the canon changed the countenances of these men. They looked
like veterans of many battles. There was no bravado in their faces. The
expression which lived there was a resigned, suffering, stubborn courage.
It was the "silent berserker rage" which Carlyle praises. It was the
speechless endurance which you see in portraits of the Great Frederick,
Wellington, and Grant.

They relieved each other. The bow was guard duty; the steering was light
duty; the midships off duty. It must be understood that, the great danger
being sunken rocks, one man always crouched in the bow, with a paddle
plunged below the surface, feeling for ambushes of the stony bushwhackers.
Occasionally all three had to labor, jumping into shallows, lifting the
boat over beds of pebbles, perhaps lightening it of arms and provisions,
perhaps carrying all ashore to seek a portag