for a long distance before he started across, and
then swung into the current. He swept down rapidly, and twice the skiff
whirled, and completely turned round; but he reached our bank safely.
Taking two men aboard he rowed upstream again, close to the shore, and
returned to the opposite side in much the same manner in which he had
come over.

The three men pushed out the scow, and grasping the rope overhead,
began to pull. The big craft ran easily. When the current struck it,
the wire cable sagged, the water boiled and surged under it, raising
one end, and then the other. Nevertheless, five minutes were all that
were required to pull the boat over.

It was a rude, oblong affair, made of heavy planks loosely put
together, and it leaked. When Jones suggested that we get the agony
over as quickly as possible, I was with him, and we embarked together.
Jones said he did not like the looks of the tackle; and when I thought
of his by no means small mechanical skill, I had not added a cheerful
idea to my consciousness. The horses of the first team had to be
dragged upon the scow, and once on, they reared and plunged.

When we started, four men pulled the rope, and Emmett sat in the stern,
with the tackle guys in hand. As the current hit us, he let out the
guys, which maneuver caused the boat to swing stern downstream. When it
pointed obliquely, he made fast the guys again. I saw that this served
two purposes: the current struck, slid alongside, and over the stern,
which mitigated the danger, and at the same time helped the boat across.

To look at the river was to court terror, but I had to look. It was an
infernal thing. It roared in hollow, sullen voice, as a monster
growling. It had voice, this river, and one strangely changeful. It
moaned as if in pain--it whined, it cried. Then at times it would seem
strangely silent. The current as complex and mutable as human life. It
boiled, beat and bulged. The bulge itself was an incompressible thing,
like a roaring lift of the waters from submarine explosion. Then it
would smooth out, and run like oil. It shifted from one channel to
another, rushed to the center of the river, then swung close to one
shore or the other. Again it swelled near the boat, in great, boiling,
hissing eddies.

"Look! See where it breaks through the mountain!" yelled Jones in my
ear.

I looked upstream to see the stupendous granite walls separated in a
gigantic split that must have been made by a terri