scenery was of unending interest. The rocks were of many
colors--white, gray, pink and purple, with saffron tints. At an elbow of
the river the water has excavated a semicircular chamber which would
hold fifty thousand people, and farther on the cliffs are of
softly-tinted marble lustrously polished by the waves. At one place
Major Powell walked for more than a mile on a marble pavement fretted
with strange devices and embossed with a thousand different patterns.
Through a cleft in the wall the sun shone on this floor, which gleamed
with iridescent beauty. Exploring the cleft, Major Powell found a
succession of pools one above another, and each cold and clear, though
the water of the river was a dull red. Then a bend in the canon
disclosed a massive abutment that seemed to be set with a million
brilliant gems as they approached it, and every one wondered. As they
came closer to it they saw many springs bursting from the rock high
overhead, and the spray in the sunshine forms the gems which glitter in
the walls, at the base of which is a profusion of mosses, ferns and
flowers. To the place above where the three portages were necessary the
name of Cataract Canon was given; and they were now well into the Grand
Canon itself. The walls were more than a mile in height, and, as Major
Powell says, a vertical altitude like this is not easily pictured.
"Stand on the south steps of the Treasury Building in Washington and
look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Park, and measure this
distance overhead, and imagine cliffs to extend to that altitude, and
you will understand what I mean," the explorer has written; "or stand at
Canal street in New York and look up Broadway to Grace Church, and you
have about the distance; or stand at the Lake street bridge in Chicago
and look down to the Central Depot, and you have it again." A thousand
feet of the distance is through granite crags, above which are slopes
and perpendicular cliffs to the summit. The gorge is black and narrow
below, red and gray and flaring above.

[Illustration: THE HEART OF CATARACT CANON.]

Down these gloomy depths the expedition constantly glided, ever
listening and ever peering ahead, for the canon is winding and they
could not see more than a few hundred yards in advance. The view
changed every minute as some new crag or pinnacle or glen or peak became
visible; but the men were fully engaged listening for rapids and looking
for rocks. Navigation was exceedi