bscure, and
without so energetic a guide as they possessed it would have required a
stout-hearted man to proceed.

Every here and there they had to slide down the rock perhaps forty or
fifty feet; then there would be a careful picking of the way over some
rugged stones, and then another slide down for a while.

Once or twice it seemed as if they had come to a full stop, the rift
being closed up by fallen masses of earth and stones; but the Beaver
mounted these boldly, as if he knew of their existence, and lowered
himself gently down the other side, waiting to help the Doctor, for Bart
laughingly declined, preferring as he did to leap from stone to stone,
and swing himself over cracks that seemed almost impassable.

"This is nature's work, Bart," the Doctor said, as he paused to wipe his
streaming face. "No former inhabitants ever made this. It is an
earthquake-split, I should say."

"But it might be easily made into a good path, sir," replied Bart.

"It might be made, Bart, but not easily, and it would require a great
deal of engineering to do it. How dark it grows! You see nothing
hardly can grow down here except these mosses and little fungi."

"Is it much farther, sir?" cried Bart.

"What! are you tired, my lad?"

"No, sir; not I. Only it seems as if we must be near the bottom of the
canyon."

"No, not yet," said the Beaver in good English, and both the Doctor and
Bart smiled, while the chief seemed pleased at his advance in the
English tongue being noticed. "Long down--long down," he said in
continuation.

"The Beaver-with-Sharp-Teeth tells the English chief and the little boy
English chief that it is far yet to the bottom of the way to the rushing
river of the mountain," said the interpreter, and the chief frowned at
him angrily, while Bart felt as if he should like to kick him for
calling him a "little boy English chief;" but the stoical Indian calmly
and indifferently allowed the angry looks he received to pass, and
followed the party down as they laboriously stepped from stone to stone.

"There's a pretty good flush o' water here in rainy times, master,"
shouted Joses. "See how all the earth has been washed out. Shouldn't
wonder if you found gold here."

"I ought to have thought of that, Joses," replied the Doctor, as he
proceeded to examine the crevices of the rock over which he was walking
as well as he could for the gloom and obscurity of the place, and at the
end of five minutes he utt