n the deep gorge at our feet.
So sudden was the transformation that soon it was night, the solemn,
impressive night of the desert. A stillness that seemed too sacred to
break clasped the place; it was infinite; it held the bygone ages, and
eternity.

More days, and miles, miles, miles! The last day's ride to the Big
Colorado was unforgettable. We rode toward the head of a gigantic red
cliff pocket, a veritable inferno, immeasurably hot, glaring, awful. It
towered higher and higher above us. When we reached a point of this red
barrier, we heard the dull rumbling roar of water, and we came out, at
length, on a winding trail cut in the face of a blue overhanging the
Colorado River. The first sight of most famous and much-heralded
wonders of nature is often disappointing; but never can this be said of
the blood-hued Rio Colorado. If it had beauty, it was beauty that
appalled. So riveted was my gaze that I could hardly turn it across the
river, where Emmett proudly pointed out his lonely home--an oasis set
down amidst beetling red cliffs. How grateful to the eye was the green
of alfalfa and cottonwood! Going round the bluff trail, the wheels had
only a foot of room to spare; and the sheer descent into the red,
turbid, congested river was terrifying.

I saw the constricted rapids, where the Colorado took its plunge into
the box-like head of the Grand Canyon of Arizona; and the deep,
reverberating boom of the river, at flood height, was a fearful thing
to hear. I could not repress a shudder at the thought of crossing above
that rapid.

The bronze walls widened as we proceeded, and we got down presently to
a level, where a long wire cable stretched across the river. Under the
cable ran a rope. On the other side was an old scow moored to the bank.

"Are we going across in that?" I asked Emmett, pointing to the boat.

"We'll all be on the other side before dark," he replied cheerily.

I felt that I would rather start back alone over the desert than trust
myself in such a craft, on such a river. And it was all because I had
had experience with bad rivers, and thought I was a judge of dangerous
currents. The Colorado slid with a menacing roar out of a giant split
in the red wall, and whirled, eddied, bulged on toward its confinement
in the iron-ribbed canyon below.

In answer to shots fired, Emmett's man appeared on the other side, and
rode down to the ferry landing. Here he got into a skiff, and rowed
laboriously upstream