he river. Or you can join
the regular tourist party both going down and coming up. Mainly because
we wanted to see the sunrise, but also because a big party on a narrow
trail is always unsafe and a gabbling crowd on a beautiful trail is
always agony, two of us rose at four A. M. and walked down the trail
during sunrise, leaving orders for a special guide to fetch mules down
for us to the river. Space forbids details of the tramp, except to say
it was worth the effort, twice over worth the effort in spite of knees
that sent up pangs and protests for a week.

It had rained heavily all night and the path was very slippery; but if
rain brings out the colors of the Petrified Forests, you can imagine
what it does to sunrise in a sea of blood-red mountain peaks. Much of
the trail is at an angle of forty-five degrees; but it is wide and well
shored up at the outer edge. The foliage lining the trail was dripping
wet; and the sunlight struck back from each leaf in spangles of gold. An
incense as of morning worship filled the air with the odor of cedars and
cloves and wild nutmeg pinks and yucca bloom. There are many more birds
below the Canyon rim than above it; and the dawn was filled with snatches
of song from bluebirds and yellow finches and water ousels, whose notes
were like the tinkle of pure water. What looked like a tiny red hillock
from the rim above is now seen to be a mighty mountain, four, five,
seven thousand feet from river to peak, with walls smooth as if planed
by the Artificer of all Eternity. In any other place, the gorges between
these peaks would be dignified by the names of canyons. Here, they are
mere wings to the main stage setting of the Grand Canyon. We reached the
Indian Garden's Camp in time for breakfast and rested an hour before
going on down to the river. The trail followed a gentle descent over
sand-hills and rocky plateaus at first, then suddenly it began to drop
sheer in the section known as the Devil's Corkscrew. The heat became
sizzling as you descended; but the grandeur grew more imposing from the
stupendous height and sheer sides of the brilliantly colored gorges and
masses of shadows above. Then the Devil's Corkscrew fell into a sandy
dell where a tiny waterfall trickled with the sound of the voice of
many waters in the great silence. A cloudburst would fill this gorge in
about a jiffy; but a cloudburst is the last thing on earth you need
expect in this land of scant showers and no water. Sudd