ver listening, for the mad waters keep
up their roar; ever watching, ever peering ahead, for the narrow canyon
is winding and the river is closed in so that we can see but a few
hundred yards, and what there may be below we know not; so we listen for
falls and watch for rocks, stopping now and then in the bay of a recess
to admire the gigantic scenery; and ever as we go there is some new
pinnacle or tower, some crag or peak, some distant view of the upper
plateau, some strangely shaped rock, or some deep, narrow side canyon.

Then we come to another broken fall, which appears more difficult than
the one we ran this morning. A small creek comes in on the right, and
the first fall of the water is over boulders, which have been carried
down by this lateral stream. We land at its mouth and stop for an hour
or two to examine the fall. It seems possible to let down with lines, at
least a part of the way, from point to point, along the right-hand wall.
So we make a portage over the first rocks and find footing on some
boulders below. Then we let down one of the boats to the end of her
line, when she reaches a corner of the projecting rock, to which one of
the men clings and steadies her while I examine an eddy below. I think
we can pass the other boats down by us and catch them in the eddy. This
is soon done, and the men in the boats in the eddy pull us to their
side. On the shore of this little eddy there is about two feet of gravel
beach above the water. Standing on this beach, some of the men take the
line of the little boat and let it drift down against another projecting
angle. Here is a little shelf, on which a man from my boat climbs, and a
shorter line is passed to him, and he fastens the boat to the side of
the cliff; then the second one is let down, bringing the line of the
third. When the second boat is tied up, the two men standing on the
beach above spring into the last boat, which is pulled up alongside of
ours; then we let down the boats for 25 or 30 yards by walking along the
shelf, landing them again in the mouth of a side canyon. Just below this
there is another pile of boulders, over which we make another portage.
From the foot of these rocks we can climb to another shelf, 40 or 50
feet above the water.

On this bench we camp for the night. It is raining hard, and we have no
shelter, but find a few sticks which have lodged in the rocks, and
kindle a fire and have supper. We sit on the rocks all night, wrappe