meras; a plentiful supply of plates and films; a large cloth
dark-room; and whatever chemicals we should need for tests. Most
important of all, we had brought a motion-picture camera. We had no
real assurance that so delicate an apparatus, always difficult to use
and regulate, could even survive the journey--much less, in such
inexperienced hands as ours, reproduce its wonders. But this,
nevertheless, was our secret hope, hardly admitted to our most
intimate friends--that we could bring out a record of the Colorado as
it is, a live thing, armed as it were with teeth, ready to crush and
devour.

There was shopping to do; for the purchases of provisions, with a few
exceptions, had been left to the last. There were callers, too--an
embarrassing number of them. We had camped on a small island near the
town, not knowing when we did so that it had recently been put aside
for a public park. The whole of Green River City, it seemed, had
learned of our project, and came to inspect, or advise, or jeer at us.
The kindest of them wished us well; the other sort told us "it would
serve us right"; but not one of our callers had any encouragement to
offer. Many were the stories of disaster and death with which they
entertained us. One story in particular, as it seems never to have
reached print--though unquestionably true--ought to be set down here.

Three years before two young men from St. Louis had embarked here,
intending to follow the river throughout its whole course. They were
expert canoeists, powerful swimmers, and equipped with a steel boat,
we were told, built somewhat after the style of a canoe. They chose
the time of high water--not knowing, probably, that while high water
decreases the labour of the passage, it greatly increases the danger
of it. They came to the first difficult rapid in Red Canyon, seventy
odd miles below Green River City. It looked bad to them. They landed
above it and stripped to their underclothing and socks. Then they
pushed out into the stream.

Almost at once they lost control of the boat. It overturned; it rolled
over and over; it flung them off and left them swimming for their
lives. In some way, possibly the currents favouring, they reached the
shore. The boat, with all its contents, was gone. There they were,
almost naked, without food, without weapons, without the means of
building a fire; and in an uninhabited and utterly inhospitable
country.

For four days they wandered, blistered by t