Standing on the brink of all this desolation, it is small wonder if we recalled the accounts of the disasters which had overtaken so many others in the canyon below us. Many who had escaped the water had climbed out on to this death trap, as it had proven to be for them, some to perish of thirst and starvation, a few to stagger into the ranch below the canyon, a week or more after they had escaped from the water. Small wonder that some of these had lost their reason. We could only conjecture at the fate of the party whose wrecked boat had been found by the Stone expedition, a few miles below this place, with their tracks still fresh in the sand. No trace of them was ever found.

For the first time it began to dawn on us that we might have tackled a job beyond our power to complete. Most of the parties which had safely completed the trip were composed of several men, adding much to the safety of the expedition, as a whole. Others had boats much lighter than ours, a great help in many respects. Speaking for myself, I was just a little faint-hearted, and not a little overawed as we prepared to return to the boats.

While returning, we saw evidences of ancient Indians—some broken arrow-heads, and pottery also, and a small cliff ruin under a shelving rock.

What could an Indian find here to interest him! We had found neither bird, nor rabbit; not even a lizard in the Land of Standing Rocks. Perhaps they were sun worshippers, and wanted an unobstructed view of the eastern sky. That at least could be had, in unrivalled grandeur, here above the Rio Colorado.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen when we finally reached our boats at the junction. Camp was made under a large weeping willow tree, the only tree of its kind we remembered having seen on the journey.

While Emery prepared a hasty meal I made a few arrangements for embarking on the Colorado River the next morning. We were prepared to bid farewell to the Green River—the stream that had served us so well. In spite of our trials, even in the upper canyons, we had found much enjoyment in our passage through its strange and beautiful surroundings.

From a scenic point of view the canyons of the Green River, with their wonderful rock formations and stupendous gorges, are second only to those of the Colorado itself. It is strange they are so little known, when one considers the comparative ease with which these canyons on the lower end can be reached. Some day perhaps, surfeited globe-trotters, after having tired of commonplace scenery and foreign lands, will learn what a wonderful region this is, here on the lower end of the Green River.

Then no doubt, Wolverton, or others with similar outfits, will find a steady stream of sight-seers anxious to take the motor boat ride down to this point, and up to Moab, Utah, a little Mormon town on the Grand River. A short ride by automobile from Moab to the D. & R.C. railway would complete a most wonderful journey; then the transcontinental journey could be resumed.

So I mused, as I contrived an arrangement of iron hooks and oak sticks to hold on a hatch cover, from which all the thumb screws had been lost. More than likely my dream of a line of sight-seeing motor boats will be long deferred; or they may even meet the fate of Brown's and Stanton's plans for a railroad down these gorges.

As a reminder of the fate which overtakes so many of our feeble plans, we found a record of Stanton's survey on a fallen boulder, an inscription reading "A 81 + 50. Sta. D.C.C. & P.R.R.," the abbreviations standing for Denver, Colorado Canyons, and Pacific Railroad. It is possible that the hands that chiselled the inscription belonged to one of the three men who were afterwards drowned in Marble Canyon.

Emery—being very practical—interrupted my revery and plans for future sight-seers by announcing supper. The meal was limited in variety, but generous in quantity, and consisted of a dried-beef stew, fried potatoes and cocoa. A satisfied interior soon dispelled all our previous apprehensiveness. We decided not to run our rapids before we came to them.

The water still gave indications of being higher than low-water mark, although it was falling fast on the Green River. Each morning, for three days previous to our arrival at the junction, we would find the water about six inches lower than the stage of the evening before. Strange to say, we gained on the water with each day's rowing, until we had almost overtaken the stage of water we had lost during the night. More than likely we would have all the water we needed under the new conditions which were before us.

Beginning with the Colorado River, we made our journals much more complete in some ways, giving all the large rapids a number and describing many of them in detail. This was done, not only for our own satisfaction, but for the purpose of comparison with others who had gone through, for many of these rapids have histories.

It was often a question, when on the Green River, where to draw the line when counting a rapid; this was less difficult when on the Colorado. While the descent was about the same as in some of the rapids above, the increased volume of water made them look and act decidedly different. We drew the line, when counting a rapid, at a descent having a decided agitation of the water, hidden rocks, or swift descent and with an eddy or whirlpool below. Major Powell considered that many of these drops in the next canyon were above the ordinary rapid, hence the name, Cataract Canyon.

At one of the camps below Green River, Utah boat had been christened the Defiance, by painting the name on the bow. After leaving the Green we referred to the boats by their respective names, being in the Edith, I in the Defiance.



CHAPTER XIII



A COMPANION VOYAGER

THURSDAY morning, October the 26th, found Emery feeling very poorly, but insisting on going ahead with our day's work, so Camp No. 34 was soon behind us. We were embarked on a new stream, flowing west-southwest, with a body of water ten times the size of that which we had found in the upper canyons of the Green. Our sixteen-foot boats looked quite small when compared with the united currents of the Green and the Grand rivers. The Colorado River must have been about 350 feet wide here just below the junction, with a three-mile current, and possibly twenty-five feet deep, although this is only a guess. The Grand River appeared to be the higher of the two streams, and had a decidedly red colour, as though a recent storm was being carried down its gorges; while the colour of the Green was more of a coffee colour—coffee with a little cream in it.

A fourth of a mile below the junction the two currents began to mix, with a great ado about it, with small whirlpools and swift eddies, and sudden outbursts from beneath as though a strangled current was struggling to escape from the weight which overpowered it. The boats were twisted this way and that, and hard rowing was necessary to carry us down to the steadied current, and to the first rapid, which we could hear when yet far above it.

Soon we were running rapids again, and getting a lot of sport out of it. There were some rocks, but there was water enough so that these could be avoided. If one channel did not suit us, we took another, and although we were drenched in every rapid, and the cockpit was half filled each time, it was not cold enough to cause us any great discomfort, and we bailed out at the end of each rapid, then hurried on to tackle the next. Each of these rapids was from a fourth to a third of a mile in length. The average was at least one big rapid to the mile. When No. 5 was reached we paused a little longer, and looked it over more carefully than we had the others. It had a short, quick descent, then a long line of white-topped waves, with a big whirlpool on the right. There were numerous rocks which would take careful work to avoid. The waves were big,—big enough for a motion picture,—so Emery remained on shore with both the motion-picture camera and the 8X10 plate camera in position, ready to take the picture, while I ran my boat.

At the head of this rapid we saw footprints in the sand, but not made with the same shoe as that which we had noticed above the junction. We had also seen signs of a camp, and some fishes' heads above this point, and what we took to be a dog's track along the shore.

At the head of the next rapid we saw them again, but on opposite side of the river, and could see where boat had been pulled up on the sand. This next rapid was almost as bad as the one above it, but with a longer descent, instead of one abrupt drop. The following rapid was so close that we continued along the shore to look it over at the same time, saving a stop between the two rapids. The shores were strewn with a litter of gigantic boulders—fallen sections of the overhanging cliffs. We found more of this in Cataract Canyon than in any of the canyons above. This was partly responsible for the violence of the rapids, although the descent of the river would make rough water even if there were no boulders. Working back along the shore, we were suddenly electrified into quick action by seeing the Edith come floating down the river, close to the shore and almost on the rapid. Emery was a short distance ahead and ran for the Defiance; I caught up a long pole and got on a projecting rock, hoping I might steer her in. She passed me, and was soon in the midst of the rapid before Emery had launched the boat. Three gigantic boulders extended above the water about fifty feet from shore, with a very crooked channel between. Down toward these boulders came the Edith, plunging like a thing possessed. How it was done I could never tell, but she passed through the crooked channel without once touching, and continued over the rapid. Meanwhile Emery had run the other side and had gained on the Edith, but only caught her when close to the next rapid; so he turned her loose and came to the shore for me.

Emery had not been feeling his best and I advised him to remain on shore while I took the boat. As we made the change we again observed the boat, bounding through the next rapid, whirling on the tops of the waves as though in the hands of a superhuman juggler. I managed to overtake her in a whirlpool below the rapid, and came to shore for her captain. He was nearly exhausted with his efforts; still he insisted on continuing. A few miles below we saw some ducks, and shot at them with a revolver. But the ducks flew disdainfully away, and landed in the pool below.

By 4.30 P.M. we were twelve miles below the junction, a very good day's run considering the kind of water we were travelling on, and the amount of time we spent on the shore. We had just run our twelfth rapid, and were turning the boats around, when we saw a man back from the shore working over a pile of boxes which he had covered with a piece of canvas. A boat was tied to the water's edge. We called to him, and he answered, but did not seem nearly as much interested in seeing companion travellers as we were, and proceeded with his work. We landed, and, to save time, introduced ourselves, as there seemed to be a certain aloofness in his manner. He gave the name of Smith—with some hesitation, we thought.

Smith was about medium size, but looked tough and wiry; he had a sandy complexion, with light hair and mustache. He had lost one eye, the other was that light gray colour that is usually associated with indomitable nerve. He had a shrewd, rather humorous expression, and gave one the impression of being very capable. Dressed in a neat whipcord suit, wearing light shoes and a carefully tied tie, recently shaved—a luxury we had denied ourselves, all this time—he was certainly an interesting character to meet in this out-of-the-way place. We should judge he was a little over forty years old; but whether prospector, trapper, or explorer it was hard to say. Some coyote skins, drying on a rock, would give one the impression that he was the second, with a touch of the latter thrown in. These coyotes were responsible for the tracks we had seen, and had mistaken for dog tracks, but of all the canyons we had seen he was in the last place where we would expect to find a trapper. The coyotes evidently reached the river gorge through side canyons on the left, where we had seen signs of ancient trails. Apart from that there was no sign of animal life. With the last of the wooded canyons, the signs of beaver had disappeared. There were a few otter tracks, but they are wily fellows, and are seldom trapped. While there are laws against the trapping of beaver, they seldom prevent the trappers from taking them when they get the chance; they are only a little more wary of strangers; the thought occurred to us that this trapper may have secured some beaver in the open sections above, and mistrusted us for this reason.

It was too late to go any farther that evening, so we camped a hundred yards below him, close to where our boats were pulled out. At this place there was a long, wide flat in the canyon, with plenty of driftwood, so we saw no reason why we should quarrel with our neighbour. Smith accepted our invitation to supper, stating that he had just eaten before we arrived, but enjoyed some pineapple which we had kept for some special occasion, and which was served for dessert.

Over the table we became better acquainted, and, after learning what we were doing, he recounted his experiences. He told us he had left Green River, Utah, a month before, and had been trapping as he came along. He knew there was a canyon, and some rapids below, but had no idea they were so bad, and thought they were about ended. No one had warned him, for he had told no one what he intended doing. He had bought an old water-logged boat that had been built by Galloway, and seeing the uselessness of trying to run the rapids with it, worked it down along the shores by holding it with a light chain. Once he had been pulled into the river, twice the boat had been upset, and he was just about dried out from the last spill when we arrived. He had heard us shooting at the ducks, so rather expected company—this in brief was his amazing story.

We were surprised when we examined the boat closely. It had been well made, but was so old and rotten that it seemed ready to fall to pieces. In places, the nail heads had pulled through the boards. It was entirely open on top—a great risk in such water. His boxes were tied in to prevent loss. These boxes were now piled on the shore, with a large canvas thrown over them. This canvas, fastened at the top and sloping to the ground, served him for a tent; his bed was underneath. A pair of high-topped boots, placed bottom up over two sticks, stuck in the sand beside the camp-fire, explained the different tracks we had seen above.

Smith evidently was not much alarmed over his situation. About the only thing that seemed to bother him was the fact that his smoking tobacco had been wet several times. That evening we got out our guide-book—Dellenbaugh's "A Canyon Voyage"—and tried to give him an idea of what was ahead. The walls ahead grew higher, and closer together; sometimes there was a shore on one side, sometimes on the other, at one or two places there was no shore on either side, and the rapids continued to get worse,—so we gathered from Dellenbaugh's experience. Above this point there were several places where one could climb out,—we had even seen signs of ancient trails in two side canyons,—below here few such places existed.

Smith listened to all this attentively, then smiled and said "I guess there will be some way through." After a short visit he returned to his camp. We noticed that he slept on his gun,—to keep it dry, no doubt, for it looked like rain.

Morning found us very sorry that we had not erected our tent, for it rained nearly all night, but when once in our beds it was a question which was preferable; to get out in the rain and put up our tent, or remain in our comfortable beds. We remained where we were. As we prepared to leave, we offered Smith a chance to accompany us through Cataract Canyon, telling him that we would help him with his boat until the quiet water of Glen Canyon was reached. He declined the opportunity, saying that he would rather travel slowly and do what trapping he could. He welcomed a chance to take a ride on the Defiance, however. We took him over two small rapids, and gave him an insight into our method of avoiding the dangers. He was very enthusiastic about it. On reaching the next rapid we all concluded it would be very unwise to carry any passengers, for it was violent water, so he got out on the shore.

Smith had once seen some moving pictures of Japanese shooting rapids, but he said they were nothing compared to these, remarking that a bronco could hardly buck any harder. The next rapid was just as bad, Rapid No. 14 for Cataract Canyon, and Smith helped us secure a motion picture. Then he prepared to return to his camp. Just before leaving he explained rather apologetically, that ranchers, or others, were usually very unfriendly to a stranger coming into their section of the country. He had heard us shooting at the ducks and he imagined we belonged in some of the side canyons or on the top. This explained his puzzling attitude at our first meeting. If he had any beaver skins in his pack this would make him even more suspicious of strangers. We wished him nothing but the best of luck, and were good friends when we parted. His decision to make the trip alone, poorly equipped as he was, seemed like suicide to us. He promised to write to us if he got out, and with a final wave of the hand we left him on the shore.

The rapid just passed was possibly the scene of the disaster discovered by the Stone expedition. They found a clumsy boat close to the shore, jammed in a mass of rocks, smashed and abandoned. There were tracks of three people in the sand, one track being a boy's. A coat was left on the shore. The tracks disappeared up a box canyon. Mr. Stone corresponded with the only settlements in all that region, few in number, and far distant; but nothing was ever heard of them, Two other parties have left Green River, Utah, within a year of this find and disappeared in like manner. This seemed to be the usual result of these attempts. In nearly every case they have started in boats that are entirely unfitted for rough water, and, seemingly without any knowledge of the real danger ahead, try to follow where others, properly equipped, have gone through.

What a day of excitement that was! We always thought we needed a certain amount of thrills to make life sufficiently interesting for us. In a few hours' time, in the central portion of Cataract Canyon, we experienced nearly enough thrills to last us a lifetime. In one or two of the upper canyons we thought we were running rapids. Now we were learning what rapids really were. No sooner were we through one than another presented itself. At each of them we climbed along the boulder-strewn shores—the lower slopes growing steeper, the walls above towering higher—clear to the end of the rapid. Looking upstream we could pick out the submerged rocks hidden in the muddy water, and looking like an innocent wave from above. Twice we had picked out channels in sharp drops, after carefully observing their actions and deciding they were free from obstructions, when suddenly the waves would part for an instant and disclose a hidden rock—in one case as sharp as a hound's tooth—sure disaster if we ever struck it. As soon as we had decided on a channel we would lose no time in getting back to our boats and running it for we could feel our courage oozing from our finger tips with each second's delay. Time and again we got through just by a scratch. Success bred confidence; I distinctly remember feeling that water alone would not upset the boat; that it would take a collision with a rock to do it. And each time we got through. Twice I almost had reason to reverse my impression of the power of water. First the stern rose up in front of me, as if squaring off at the tops of the cliffs, then descended, until it seemed to be trying to plumb the depths of the river. The waves, rolling over me, almost knocked me out of the boat, I lost my hold on the oars and grabbed the sides of the boat; then, regaining the oars, I finished the run by pulling with the bow headed downstream, for the boat had "swapped ends" in the interval, and was heavy with about three barrels of water in the cockpit. I bailed out with a grocery box, kept under the seat for that purpose. It had been growing quite cold, and Emery's indisposition—or what was really acute indigestion—had weakened him for the past two days, but he pluckily declined to stop. I was soaked with my last immersion and chilled with the wind, so concluded there was no use having him go through the same experience and I ran his boat while he made a picture. We were both ready to camp then, but there was no suitable place and we had to push on to the next rapid. On looking it over we almost gave up our intention of running it. It was about a fourth of a mile long; a mass of submerged rocks extended entirely across the river; the entire rapid seemed impossible. We finally concluded it might be run by shooting up, stern first, on a sloping rock near the shore, then return as the current recoiled and ran back, dividing on either side of the rock. The only clear channel was one about twelve feet wide, between this rock and the shore. A projecting shore above prevented a direct entrance to this channel.

We threw logs in and watched their action. In each case they paused when within five or six feet of the top of the slope, then returned with the current, whirled back to the side and shot through close to the shore. We planned to go through as close together as possible. Emery was ready first, I held back in a protecting pool, waiting for him to get out of the way. He got his position, facing stern downstream, gave the slightest shove forward, and the released boat whizzed down for fifty feet and ran up on the rock. She paused a moment, as the water prepared to return. He gave two quick pulls, shooting back again, slightly to the right, until he struck the narrow channel, then reversed his course and went through stern first exactly as we had planned it. The square stern, buoyed up by the air-chamber, lifted the boat out of the resulting wave as he struck the bottom of the descent. This much of the rapid had only taken a few seconds.

I followed at once, but was not so fortunate. The Defiance was carried to the left side, where some water dropped over the side of the rock, instead of reversing. I pulled frantically, seeing visions, meanwhile, of the boat and myself being toppled off the side of the rock, into the boulders and waves below. My rowing had no effect whatever, but the boat was grabbed by the returning wave and shot, as if from a catapult, back and around to the right, through the sloping narrow channel,—my returning course describing a half circle. Instead of rising, the pointed bow cut down into the waves until the water was on my shoulders. Emery turned his head for an instant to see what success I was having, and his boat was thrown on to a rock close to the shore. I passed him and landed, just before going into the next rapid. I then went back and helped him off the rock, and he continued his course over the leaping waves. He broke a rowlock before he landed, and had to use the substitute we had hung beside it.

We found a good spot for a camp just above the next rapid. Our tent was stretched in front of a large boulder. A large pile of driftwood gave us all the fuel needed, and we soon had a big fire going and our wet clothes steaming on the line.



CHAPTER XIV



A PATIENT AMID THE CATARACTS

An hour or so after making our camp, we began to doubt the wisdom of our choice of a location, for a downpour of rain threatened to send a stream of water under the tent. The stream was easily turned aside, while a door and numerous boards found in the drift pile, made a very good floor for the tent and lifted our sleeping bags off the wet sand. We had little trouble in this section to find sufficient driftwood for fires. The pile at this camp was enormous, and had evidently been gathering for years. Some of it, we could be sure, was recent, for a large pumpkin was found deposited in the drift pile twenty-five feet above the low-water stage on which we were travelling. This pumpkin, of course, could only have come down on the flood that had preceded us.

What a mixture of curios some of those drift piles were, and what a great stretch of country they represented! The rivers, unsatisfied with washing away the fertile soil of the upper country, had levied a greedy toll on the homes along their banks, as well. Almost everything that would float, belonging to a home, could be found in some of them. There were pieces of furniture and toilet articles, children's toys and harness, several smashed boats had been seen, and bloated cattle as well. A short distance above this camp we had found two cans of white paint, carefully placed on top of a big rock above the high-water mark, by some previous voyager.[5] The boats were beginning to show the effect of hard usage, so we concluded to take the paint along. At another point, this same day, we found a corked bottle containing a faded note, undated, requesting the finder to write to a certain lady in Delta, Colorado. A note in my journal, beneath a record of this find, reads: "Aha! A romance at last!" Judging by the appearance of the note it might have been thrown in many years before. Delta, we knew, was on the Gunnison River, a tributary of the Grand River. The bottle must have travelled over two hundred miles to reach this spot.

A letter which I sent out later brought a prompt answer, with the information that this bottle and four others with similar notes were set adrift by the writer and four of her schoolmates, nearly two years before. An agreement was made that the one first receiving an answer was to treat the others to a dinner. Our find was the second, so this young lady was a guest instead of the host.

Emery took but little interest in our camp arrangements this evening, and went to bed as soon as it was possible for him to do so. He said little, but he was very weak, and I could tell from his drawn face that he was suffering, and knew that it was nothing but nervous energy that kept him at his work—that, and a promise which he had made to build a fire, within a stated time now less than two weeks away, in Bright Angel Creek Canyon, nearly three hundred miles below this camp, a signal to his wife and baby that he would be home the next day. I was worried about his condition and I feared a fever or pneumonia. For two or three days he had not been himself. It was one thing to battle with the river when well and strong; it would be decidedly different if one of us became seriously ill.

For the first time in all our experiences together, where determination and skill seemed necessary to success, I had taken the lead during the past two days, feeling that my greater weight and strength, perhaps, would help me pull out of danger where he might fail. In two or three rapids I felt sure he did not have the strength to pull away from certain places that would smash the boats. After running the Defiance through these rapids I suggested to him that; he would take a picture while I brought the Edith down. He would stay near the Defiance, ready to aid in case of emergency. After being once through a rapid I found it quite a simple matter to run the second boat, and the knowledge that he would save me in case of an upset greatly lessened any danger that might have existed. He was too nervous to sleep, and asked me to take a last look at the boats before going to bed. They were pulled well up on the shore and securely tied, I found, so that it would take a flood to tear them loose. The rain, which had stopped for a while, began again as I rolled into the blankets; the fire, fed with great cottonwood logs, threw ghostly shadows on the cliffs which towered above us, and sputtered in the rain but refused to be drowned; while the roar of rapids, Nos. 22 and 23 combined, thundered and reverberated from wall to wall, and finally lulled us to sleep.

The rain continued all night, but the weather cleared in the morning. Emery felt much the same as he had the day before, so we kept the same camp that day. We took some pictures, and made a few test developments, hanging the dark-room, or tent, inside the other tent for want of a better place to tie to.

Sunday, October the 29th, we remained at the same place, and by evening were both greatly benefited by the rest. On Monday morning we packed up again, leaving only the moving-picture camera out, and pictured each other, alternately, as the boats made the Plunge over the steep descent in rapid No. 23. Both boats disappeared from sight on two or three occasions in this rapid and emerged nearly filled with water.

The section just passed is credited with the greatest descent on the rivers, a fall of 75 feet in 3/4 of a mile. This includes the three rapids: Nos. 21, 22, and 23.

Proceeding on our way the canyon narrowed, going up almost sheer to a height of 2500 feet or over. Segregated spires, with castle-like tops, stood out from the upper walls. The rapids, or cataracts, compared well with those passed above, connected in some instances by swift-rushing water instead of the quiet pools which were usually found between the rapids. We ran ten rapids this day, but several of these which were counted as one were a series of two or three rapids, which might be one in high water. All had a shore on one side or the other, but caution was imperative when crossing in the swift water between the rapids. A mishap here meant destruction. We figured that we had travelled about ten miles for this day's run.

The menacing walls continued to go higher with the next day's travel, until they reached a height of 2700 feet. The left wall was so sheer that it almost seemed to overhang. The little vegetation which we had found on the lower slope gradually disappeared as the walls grew steeper, but a few scattered shrubs, sage-brush, and an occasional juniper grew on the rocky sides, or in one or two side canyons which entered from the south. These side canyons had the appearance of running back for considerable distances, but we did not explore any of them and could tell very little about them from the river.

After our noon lunch this day, in order to keep our minds from dwelling too much on the rather depressing surroundings, we proposed having a little sport. On two or three occasions we had made motion pictures from the deck of the boats as we rowed in the quiet water; here we proposed taking a picture from the boats as we went over the rapids. The two boats were fastened stern to stern, so that the rowing would be done from the first boat. My brother sat on the bow behind with the motion-picture camera in front of him, holding it down with his chin, his legs clinging to the sides of the boat, with his left hand clutching at the hatch cover, and with his right hand free to turn the crank. In this way we passed over two small rapids. After that one experience we never tried it in a large rapid. As Smith had said a few days before the boat bucked like a broncho, and Emery had a great deal of difficulty to stay with the boat, to say nothing of taking a picture. Once or twice he was nearly unseated but pluckily hung on and kept turning away at the crank when it looked as if he and the camera would be dumped into the river.

At one point in the lower end of Cataract Canyon we saw the name and date A.G. Turner, '07. Below this, close to the end of the canyon, were some ruins of cliff dwellings, and a ladder made by white men, placed against the walls below the ruins.

On reaching a very deep, narrow canyon entering from the south, locally known as Dark Canyon, we knew that we were nearing the end of the rapids in Cataract Canyon. Dark Canyon extends a great distance back into the country, heading in the mountains we had seen to the south, when we climbed out at the junction of the Green and the Grand. Pine cones and other growths entirely foreign to the growth of the desert region were found near its mouth. A flood had recently filled the bottom of this narrow canyon to a depth of several feet, but the water had settled down again and left a little stream of clear water running through the boulders. The rapid at the end of this canyon was one of the worst of the entire series, and had been the scene of more than one fatality, we had been told. It had a very difficult approach and swung against the right wall, then the water was turned abruptly to the left by a great pile of fallen boulders. The cresting waves looked more like breakers of the ocean than anything we had seen on the river.

We each had a good scare as we ran this rapid. Emery was completely hidden from my view, he was nearly strangled and blinded by the waves for a few seconds while struggling in the maelstrom; the Edith was dropped directly on top of a rock in the middle of this rapid, then lifted on the next wave. I also had a thrilling experience but avoided the rock. In the lower part of the rapid a rowlock pulled apart; and to prevent the boat from turning sideways in the rapid, I threw up my knee, holding the oar against it for a lever until I was in quieter water, and could get the other rowlock in position.

Separated from my brother in this instance, I had an opportunity to see the man and water conflict, with a perspective much as it would have appeared to a spectator happening on the scene. I was out of the heat of the battle. The excitement and indifference to danger that comes with a hand-to-hand grapple was gone. I heard the roar of the rapid; a roar so often heard that we forgot it was there. I saw the gloom of the great gorge, and the towering, sinister shafts of rock, weakened with cracks, waiting for the moment that would send them crashing to the bottom. I saw the mad, wild water hurled at the curving wall. Jagged rocks, like the bared fangs of some dream-monster, appeared now and then in the leaping, tumbling waves. Then down toward the turmoil—dwarfed to nothingness by the magnitude of the walls—sped the tiny shell-like boat, running smoothly like a racing machine! There was no rowing. The oar-blades were tipped high to avoid loss in the first comber; then the boat was buried in foam, and staggered through on the other side. It was buffeted here and there, now covered with a ton of water, now topping a ten-foot wave. Like a skilled boxer—quick of eye, and ready to seize any temporary advantage—the oarsman shot in his oars for two quick strokes, to straighten the boat with the current or dodge a threatening boulder; then covered by lifting his oars and ducking his head as a brown flood rolled over him. Time and again the manoeuvre was repeated: now here now there. One would think the chances were about one to a hundred that he would get through. But by some sort of a system, undoubtedly aided, many times, by good luck, the man and his boat won to land.

After running a small rapid, we came to another, in the centre of which was an island,—the last rapid in Cataract Canyon. While not as bad as the one at Dark Canyon it was rather difficult, and at this point we found no shore on either side. The south side was rendered impassable by great boulders, much higher than the river level, which were scattered through the channel. The opposite channel began much like the rapid at Dark Canyon, sweeping under the wall until turned by a bend and many fallen rocks below the end of the island, then crossed with a line of cresting waves to the opposite side, where it was joined by the other stream, and the left wall was swept clean in like manner. We ran it by letting our boats drop into the stream, but pulled away from the wall and kept close to the island, then when its end was reached crossed the ridge of waves and pulled for the right-hand shore. In such rapids as this we often found the line of waves in the swift-rushing centre to be several feet higher than the water along the shore.

Then our thoughts reverted to Smith. What would he do when he came to this rapid? The only escape was a narrow sloping ledge on the right side, beginning close to the water some distance above the rapid, reaching a height of sixty or seventy feet above the water at the lower end, while a descent could be made to the river some distance below here. It would be possible for him to climb over this with his provisions, but the idea of taking his boat up there was entirely out of the question, and, poorly equipped as he was, an attempt to run it would surely end in disaster. The breaking of an oar, the loss of a rowlock, or the slightest knock of his rotten boat against a rock, and Smith's fate would be similar to those others whose bones lay buried in the sands.

In the next four miles we had no more rapids, but had some fine travelling on a very swift river. It was getting dusk, but we pulled away, for just ahead of us was the end of Cataract Canyon. We camped by a large side canyon on the left named Mille Crag Bend, with a great number of jagged pinnacles gathered in a group at the top of the walls, which had dropped down to a height of about 1300 feet. We felt just a little proud of our achievement, and believed we had established a record for Cataract Canyon, having run all rapids in four days' travelling, and come through in safety.

We had one rapid to run the next morning at the beginning of Narrow Canyon, the only rapid in this nine-mile long canyon. The walls here at the beginning were twelve or thirteen hundred feet high, and tapered to the end, where they rise about four hundred feet above the Dirty Devil River. Narrow Canyon contains the longest straight stretch of river which we remembered having seen. When five miles from its mouth we could look through and see the snow-capped peak of Mt. Ellsworth beyond. This peak is one of the five that composes the Henry Mountains, which lay to the north of the river.

Three hours' rowing brought us to the end. We paused a few minutes to make a picture or two of the Dirty Devil River,—or the Fremont River as it is now recorded on the maps. This stream, flowing from the north, was the exact opposite of the Bright Angel Creek, that beautiful stream we knew so well, two hundred and fifty miles below this point. The Dirty Devil was muddy and alkaline, while warm springs containing sulphur and other minerals added to its unpalatable taste. After tasting it we could well understand the feeling of the Jack Sumner, whose remark, after a similar trial, suggested its name to Major Powell.

A short distance below this we saw a tent, and found it occupied by an old-timer named Kimball. Among other things he told us that he had a partner, named Turner, who had made the trip through the canyons above, and arrived at this point in safety. This was the man whose name we had seen on the walls in Cataract Canyon. Less than two miles more brought us to the Hite ranch, and post-office. John Hite gave us a cordial reception. He had known of our coming from the newspapers; besides, he had some mail for us. We spent the balance of the day in writing letters, and listening to Hite's interesting experiences of his many years of residence in this secluded spot. Hite's home had been a haven for the sole survivor of two expeditions which had met with disaster in Cataract. In each case they were on the verge of starvation. Hite kept a record of all known parties who had attempted the passage through the canyons above. Less than half of these parties, excepting Galloway's several successful trips, succeeded in getting through Cataract Canyon without wrecking boats or losing lives.

After passing the Fremont River the walls on the right or north side dropped down, leaving low, barren sandstone hills rolling away from the river, with a fringe of willows and shrubs beside the water, and with the usual sage-brush, prickly pear, cactus and bunch-grass on the higher ground. We had seen one broken-down log cabin, but this ranch was the only extensive piece of ground that was cultivated. Judging by the size of his stacks of alfalfa, Hite had evidently had a good season. The banks of the south side of the river were about two hundred feet high, composed of a conglomerate mass of clay and gravel. This spot has long been a ferry crossing, known far and wide as Dandy Crossing, the only outlet across the river for the towns of southeastern Utah, along the San Juan River. The entire 150 miles of Glen Canyon had once been the scene of extensive placer operations. The boom finally died, a few claims only proving profitable.

One of these claims was held by Bert Loper, one of the three miners who had gone down the river in 1908. Loper never finished, as his boat—a steel boat, by the way—was punctured in a rapid above Dark Canyon but was soon repaired. His cameras and plates being lost, he sent from Hite out for new ones. His companions—Chas. Russell, and E.R. Monette—were to wait for him at Lee's Ferry, after having prospected through Glen Canyon. Some mistake was made about the delivery of the cameras and, as Hite post-office only had weekly communication with the railroad, a month elapsed before he finally secured them. Lee's Ferry had been discontinued as a post-office at that time, and, although he tried to get a letter in to them, it was never delivered. His disappointment can be imagined better than described, when he reached Lee's Ferry and found his companions had left just a few days previous. They naturally thought if he were coming at all he would have been there long before that, and they gave him up, not knowing the cause of the delay. They left a letter, however, saying they would only go to the Bright Angel Trail, and the trip could be completed together on the following year.

Loper spent many hard days working his boat, with his load of provisions, back against the current, and located a few miles below the Hite ranch.



CHAPTER XV



PLACER GOLD

We passed Loper's claim after resuming our journey the next day. His workings were a one-man proposition and very ingenious. We found a tunnel in the gravel a hundred feet above the river, and some distance back from the river bank. A track of light rails ran from the river bank to these workings; the gravel and sand was loaded into a car, and hauled or pushed to the bank, then dumped into a chute, which sent it down to the river's edge.

Loper was not at his work however, neither did we find him at his ranch, a mile down the river. He had a neat little place, with fruit trees and a garden, a horse or two, and some poultry. After resuming our rowing, when about a mile down the river, some one called to us from the shore, and Loper himself came running down to meet us. John Hite had requested us to stop and see his brother, Cass Hite, who owned a ranch and placer working nearly opposite where Loper had halted us; so Loper crossed with us, as he was anxious to know of our passage through the canyons.

We found, in Cass Hite, an interesting "old-timer," one who had followed the crowd of miners and pioneers, in the West, since the discovery of gold on the coast. He was the discoverer of the White Canyon Natural Bridges, of Southern Utah, located between this point and the San Juan River, and had been the first to open the ferry at Dandy Crossings. Hite had prospected Navajo Mountain, southwest of this point, in the early sixties, about the time of the Navajos' trouble with the United States army, under the leadership of Kit Carson, who dislodged them from their strongholds in the mountains after many others had failed. Hite's life was saved on more than one occasion by warnings from a friendly chief, or head man of the Western Navajos, known as Hoskaninni, who regarded him as a brother, and bestowed on him the name, Hosteen pes'laki, meaning "Silver man." He is still known by this name, and refers to his pretty ranch as Tick a Bo, a Ute word for "friendly." Hite proudly quoted a poem written by Cy Warman about the theme of the Indian's regard for his white friend. Warman had followed the crowd in to this spot at the time of the boom, looking for local colour—human local colour, not the glitter in the sands. It was at John Hite's home where Warman had composed the one time popular song, "Sweet Marie." It would be safe to say that he brought his inspiration with him, for this was decidedly a man's country. We were told that it had only been visited by one woman in the past twelve years. Hite insisted on our remaining until the following morning, and we concluded that the rest would do us good. He loaded us up with watermelons, and with raisins, which he was curing at that time. We spent a pleasant afternoon under a shaded arbour, listening to his reminiscences, and munching at the raisins.

That evening Loper told us his story of their canyon expedition. He felt a little bitter about some newspaper reports that had been published concerning this expedition, these reports giving the impression that his nerve had failed him, and that for this reason he had not continued on the journey. We mollified his feelings somewhat, when we told him that his companions were not responsible for these reports; but rather, that short telegraphic reports, sent out from the Grand Canyon, had been misconstrued by the papers; and that this accounted for the stories which had appeared. His companions had remained at the Grand Canyon for two days following their arrival at Bright Angel Trail. They gave Loper credit, to our certain knowledge, of being the only one of the party who knew how to handle the boats in rough water when they began the trip, and had stated that he ran all the boats through certain rapids until they caught the knack. They could not know of his reasons for the delay, and at that time had no knowledge of his arrival at Lee's Ferry, after they had gone. Naturally they were very much puzzled over his non-appearance.

It got quite cold that night, and we were glad to have shelter of Hite's hospitable roof. In our trip down the river to this point we had seemed to keep even with the first cold weather. In all places where it was open, we would usually find a little ice accompanied by frost in the mornings, or if no ice had frozen the grass would be wet with dew. In the canyons there was little or no ice, and the air was quite dry. Naturally we preferred the canyons if we had a choice of camps.

Loper looked as though he would like to accompany us as we pulled away the next morning, after having landed him on the south side of the stream. We, at least, had full confidence in his nerve to tackle the lower Colorado, after his record in Cataract Canyon. The five scattered peaks of the Henry Mountains were now to the north-northwest of us, rugged and snow-capped, supreme in their majesty above this desolate region.

Signs of an ancient Indian race were plentiful in this section. There were several small cliff dwellings, walled up in ledges in the rocks, a hundred feet or so above a low flat which banked the river. At another place there were hundreds of carvings on a similar wall which overhung a little. Drawings of mountain-sheep were plentiful; there was one representing a human figure with a bow and arrow, and with a sheep standing on the arrow—their way of telling that he got the sheep, no doubt. There were masked figures engaged in a dance, not unlike some of the Hopi dances of to-day, as they picture them. There were geometrical figures, and designs of many varieties. A small rock building half covered with sand and the accumulations of many years stood at the base of the cliff; and quantities of broken pottery were scattered about the ruin. Farther down the river a pathway was worn into the sandstone where countless bare and moccasined feet had toiled, and climbed over the sloping wall to the mesa above. The ruins in this section were not extensive, like those found in the tributary canyons of the San Juan River, for instance, not a very great distance from here. Possibly this people stopped here as they travelled back and forth, trading with their cousins to the north; or the dwellings may have been built by the scattered members of the tribe, when their strongholds were assailed by the more warlike tribes that crowded in on them from all sides.

What a story these cliffs could tell! What a romance they could narrate of various tribes, as distinct from each other as the nations of Europe, crowding each other; and at the last of this inoffensive race, coming from the far south, it may be; driven from pillar to post, making their last stand in this desert land; to perish of pestilence, or to be almost exterminated by the blood-thirsty tribes that surrounded them—then again, when the tide changed, and a new type of invader travelled from the east, pushing ever to the west, conquering all before them! But like the sphinx, the cliffs are silent and voiceless as the hillocks and sand-dunes along the Nile, that other desert stream, with a history no more ancient and momentous than this.

That night we camped opposite the ruins of a dredge, sunk in the low water at the edge of the river. This dredge had once represented the outlay of a great deal of money. It is conceded by nearly all experts that the sands of these rivers contain gold, but it is of such a fine grain—what is known as flour gold—and the expense of saving it is so great, that it has not paid when operated on such a large scale. A few placers in Glen Canyon have paid individual operators, some of these claims being in gravel deposits from six hundred to eight hundred feet above the present level of the river.

On the following day we again entered deep canyon; sheer for several hundred feet, creamy white above, with a dark red colour in the lower sandstone walls. That afternoon we passed a small muddy stream flowing from the north, in a narrow, rock-walled canyon. This was the Escalante River, a stream rising far to the north, named for one of the Spanish priests who had travelled this country, both to the north and the south of this point, as early as the year 1776, about the time when the New England colonists were in the midst of their struggle with the mother country.

Just below the Escalante River, the canyon turned almost directly south, continuing in this general direction for several miles. A glimpse or two was had of the top of a tree-covered snow-capped peak directly ahead of us, or a little to the southwest. This could be none other than Navajo Mountain, a peak we could see from the Grand Canyon, and had often talked of climbing, but debated if we could spare the time, now that we were close to it.

In all this run through Glen Canyon we had a good current, but only one place resembling a rapid. Here, below the Escalante, it was very quiet, and hard pulling was necessary to make any headway. We were anxious to reach the San Juan River that evening, but the days were growing short, and we were still many miles away when it began to grow dusk; so we kept a lookout for a suitable camp. The same conditions that had bothered us on one or two previous occasions were found here; slippery, muddy banks, and quicksand, together with an absence of firewood. We had learned before this to expect these conditions where the water was not swift. The slower stream had a chance to deposit its silt, and if the high water had been very quiet, we could expect to find it soft, or boggy. In the canyons containing swift water and rapids we seldom found mud, but found a firm sand, instead. Here in Glen Canyon we had plenty of mud, for the river had been falling the last few days. Time and again we inspected seemingly favourable places, only to be disappointed. The willows and dense shrubbery came down close to the river; the mud was black, deep, and sticky; all driftwood had gone out on the last flood. Meanwhile a glorious full moon had risen, spreading a soft, weird light over the canyon walls and the river; so that we now had a light much better than the dusk of half an hour previous, our course being almost due south. Finally, becoming discouraged, we decided to pull for the San Juan River, feeling sure that we would find a sand-bar there. It was late when we reached it, and instead of a sand-bar we found a delta of bottomless mud. We had drifted past the point where the rivers joined, before noticing that the stream turned directly to the west, with canyon walls two or three hundred feet high, and no moonlight entered there. Instead, it was black as a dungeon. From down in that darkness there came a muffled roar, reverberating against the walls, and sounding decidedly like a rapid. There was not a minute to lose. We pulled, and pulled hard—for the stream was now quite swift close to the right shore, and a sheer bank of earth about ten feet high made it difficult to land. Jumping into the mud at the edge of the water, we tied the boats to some bushes, then tore down the bank and climbed out on a dry, sandy point of land. At the end or sharp turn of the sheer wall we found a fair camp, with driftwood enough for that night. Emery, weak from his former illness and the long day's run, went to bed as soon as we had eaten a light supper. I looked after the cooking that evening, making some baking-powder bread,—otherwise known as a flapjack,—along with other arrangements for the next day; but I fear my efforts as a cook always resulted rather poorly.

We had breakfast at an early hour the next morning and were ready for the boats at 7.15, the earliest start to our record. Our rapid of the night before proved to be a false alarm, being nothing more than the breaking of swift water as it swept the banks of rocks at the turn. It was quite different from what we had pictured in our minds.

We had long looked forward to this day. Navajo Mountain, with bare, jagged sides and tree-covered dome, was located just a few miles below this camp. It was a sandstone mountain peak, towering 7000 feet above the river, the steep slope beginning some five or six miles back from the stream. The base on which it rested was of sandstone, rounded and gullied into curious forms, a warm red and orange colour predominating. The north side, facing the river, was steep of slope, covered with the fragments of crumbled cliffs and with soft cream-tinted pinnacles rising from its slope. The south side, we had reason, to believe, was tree-covered from top to bottom; the north side held only a few scattered cedar pinon We had often seen the hazy blue dome from the Grand Canyon, one hundred and twenty miles away, and while it was fifty miles farther by the river, we felt as if we were entered on the home stretch; as if we were in a country with which we were somewhat familiar.

The Colorado and the San Juan rivers form the northern boundary of the Navajo Indian Reservation, comprising a tract of land as large as many Eastern states, extending over a hundred miles, both east and west from this point. Embodied in this reservation, and directly opposite our camp, was a small section of rugged land set aside for some Utes, who had friendly dealings, and who had intermarried with the Navajo. But if we expected to find the Navajo, or Utes on the shore, ready to greet us, we were doomed to disappointment.

We explored a few side canyons this morning, hoping to find a spot where some of Major Powell's party—particularly those men who were afterwards killed by the Indians—had chiselled their names, which record we were told was to be found near the San Juan, but on which side we were not sure. While in one of these canyons, or what was really nothing more than a crooked overhanging slit in the rocks, containing a small stream, Emery found himself in some soft quicksand, plunged instantly above his knees, and sinking rapidly. He would have had a difficult time in getting out of this quicksand without help, for a smooth, rock wall was on one side, the other bank of the stream was sheer above him for a few feet, and there was nothing solid which he could reach. We had seen a great deal of quicksand before this, but nothing of this treacherous nature. Usually we could walk quickly over these sands without any danger of being held in them, or if caught—while lifting on a boat for instance—had no difficulty in getting out. When once out of this canyon we gave up our search for the carved record.

But it was not the hope of shortening our homeward run, or the prospect of meeting Indians on the shores, or of finding historical records, even, that caused us to make this early start. It was the knowledge that the wonderful Rainbow Natural Bridge, recently discovered, and only visited by three parties of whites, lay hidden in one of the side canyons that ran from the north slope of Navajo Mountain. No one had gone into it from the river, but we were told it could be done. We hoped to find this bridge.

The current was swift, and we travelled fast, in spite of a stiff wind which blew up the stream, getting a very good view of the mountain from the river a few miles below our camp, and another view of the extreme top, a short distance below this place, not over six miles from the San Juan. We had directions describing the canyon in which the bridge was located, our informant surmising that it was thirty miles below the San Juan. We thought it must be less than that, for the river was very direct at this place, and a person travelling over the extremely rough country which surrounded this side of the mountain slope would naturally have to travel much farther, so began to look for it about twelve miles below camp. But mile after mile went by without any sign of the landmarks that would tell us we were at the "Bridge Canyon." Then the river, which had circled the northern side of the peak, turned directly away from it, and we knew that we had missed the bridge. At no point on the trip had we met with a disappointment to equal that; even the loss of our moving-picture film, after our spill in Lodore, was small when compared with it.

On looking back over the lay of the land, we felt sure that the bridge was at one of the two places, where we had seen the top of the mountain from the river. To go back against the current would take at least three days. Our provisions were limited in quantity and would not permit it; the canyon had deepened, and a second bench of sheer cliffs rose above the plateau, making it impossible to climb out: so we concluded to make the best of it, and pulled down the stream, trying to put as many miles as possible between ourselves and our great disappointment. This afternoon we passed from Utah into Arizona. For the remainder of the trip we would have Arizona on one side of the river at least. We had much the same difficulty this evening as we had the night before in finding a camp. Judging by the evidence along the shore, the high water which came down the San Juan had been a torrent, much greater than the flood on the Colorado and its upper tributaries.



CHAPTER XVI



A WARNING

We camped that night at the Ute Ford, or the Crossing of the Fathers; a noted landmark of bygone days, when Escalante (in 1776) and others later followed the inter-tribal trails across these unfriendly lands. Later marauding Navajo used this trail, crossing the canyon to the north side, raiding the scattered Mormon settlements, bringing their stolen horses, and even sheep, down this canyon trail. Then they drove them across on a frozen river, and escaped with them to their mountain fastness. The Mormons finally tired of these predatory visits, and shut off all further loss from that source by blasting off a great ledge at the north end of the trail. This ruined the trail beyond all hope of repair, and there is no travel at present over the old Ute Crossing. The fording of the river on horseback was effected by dropping down to the river through a narrow side canyon, and crossing to the centre on a shoal, then following a centre shoal down quite a distance, and completing the crossing at a low point on the opposite side. This was only possible at the very lowest stage of water.

The morning following our arrival here, we walked about a mile up the gravelly slope on the south side, to see if we could locate the pass by which the trail dropped down over these 3000-foot walls. The canyon had changed in appearance after leaving the mountain, and now we had a canyon; smaller, but not unlike the Grand Canyon in appearance, with an inner plateau, and a narrow canyon at the river, while the walls on top were several miles apart, and towering peaks or buttes rose from the plateau, reaching a height almost equal to the walls themselves. The upper walls were cream-tinted or white sandstone, the lower formation was a warm red sandstone. We could not discover the pass without a long walk to the base of the upper cliffs, so returned to the boats.

About this time we heard shots, seeming to come from some point down the river, and on the north side. Later a dull hollow sound was heard like pounding on a great bass drum. We could not imagine what it was, but knew that it must be a great distance away. We had noticed instances before this, where these smooth, narrow canyon had a great magnifying effect on noises. In the section above the San Juan, where the upper walls overhung a little, a loud call would roll along for minutes before it finally died. A shot from a revolver sounded as if the cliff were falling.

Our run this morning was delightful. The current was the best on which we had travelled. The channel swung from side to side, in great half circles, with most of the water thrown against the outside bank, or wall, with a five-or six-mile an hour current close to the wall. We took advantage of all this current, hugging the wall, with the stern almost touching, and with the bow pointed out so we would not run into the walls or scrape our oars. Then, when it seemed as if our necks were about to be permanently dislocated, from looking over one shoulder, the river would reverse its curve, the channel would cross to the other side, and we would give that side of our necks a rest. Once in a great while I would bump a rock, and would look around sheepishly, to see if my brother had seen me do it. I usually found him with a big grin on his face, if he happened to be ahead of me.

We rowed about twenty miles down the river before we learned what had caused the noises heard in the morning. On rounding a turn we saw the strange spectacle of fifteen or twenty men at work on the half-constructed hull of a flat-bottomed steamboat, over sixty feet in length. This boat was on the bank quite a distance above the water, with the perpendicular walls of a crooked side canyon rising above it. It was a strange sight, here in this out-of-the-way corner of the world. Some men with heavy sledges were under the boat, driving large spikes into the planking. This was the noise we had heard that morning.

The blasting, we learned later, was at some coal mines, several miles up this little canyon, which bore the name of Warm Creek Canyon. A road led down through the canyon, making it possible to haul the lumber for the boat, clear to the river's edge. The nearest railroad was close to two hundred miles from this place, quite a haul considering the ruggedness of the country. The material for the boat had been shipped from San Francisco, all cut, ready to put together. The vessel was to be used to carry coal down the river, to a dredge that had recently been installed at Lee's Ferry.

The dinner gong had just sounded when we landed, and we were taken along with the crowd. There were some old acquaintances in this group of men, we found, from Flagstaff, Arizona. These men had received a Flagstaff paper which had published a short note we had sent from Green River, Utah. They had added a comment that no doubt this would be the last message we would have an opportunity to send out. Very cheering for Emery's wife, no doubt. Fortunately she shared our enthusiasm, and if she felt any apprehension her few letters failed to show it.

We resumed our rowing at once after dinner, for we wished to reach Lee's Ferry, twenty-five miles distant, that evening. We had a good current, and soon left our friends behind us. We pulled with a will, and mile after mile was covered in record time, for our heavy boats.

The walls continued to get higher as we neared our goal, going up sheer close to the river. We judged the greatest of these walls to be about eleven hundred feet high. After four hours of steady pulling we began to weary, for ours were no light loads to propel; but we were spurred to renewed effort by hearing the sounds of an engine in the distance. On rounding a turn we saw the end of Glen Canyon ahead of us, marked by a breaking down of the walls, and a chaotic mixture of dikes of rock, and slides of brilliantly coloured shales, broken and tilted in every direction. Just below this, close to a ferry, we saw the dredge on the right side of the river. We were quite close to the dredge before we were seen. Some men paused at their work to watch us as we neared them, one man calling to those behind him, "There come the brothers!"

A whistle blew announcing the end of their day's labour, and of ours as well, as it happened. There was some cheering and waving of hats. One who seemed to be the foreman asked us to tie up to a float which served as a landing for three motor boats, and a number of skiffs. A loudly beaten triangle of steel announced that the evening meal was ready at a stone building not far from the dredge. We were soon seated at a long table with a lot of others as hungry as we, partaking of a well-cooked and substantial meal. We made arrangements to take a few meals here, as we wished to overhaul our outfits before resuming our journey.

The meal ended, we inquired for the post-office, and were directed to a ranch building across the Paria River, a small stream which entered from the north, not unlike the Fremont River in size and appearance. Picking our way in the darkness, on boulders and planks which served as a crossing, we soon reached the building, set back from the river in the centre of the ranch. A man named Johnson, with his family, had charge of the ranch and post-office as well. Mail is brought by carrier from the south, a cross-country trip of 160 miles, through the Hopi and Navajo Indian Reservations.

Johnson informed us that an old-time friend named Dave Rust had waited here three or four days, hoping to see us arrive, but business matters had forced him to leave just the day before. We were very sorry to have missed him. Rust lived in the little Mormon town of Kanab, Utah, eighty miles north of the Grand Canyon opposite our home. In addition to being a cattle man and rancher, he had superintended the construction of a cable crossing, or tramway, over the Colorado River, beside the mouth of Bright Angel Creek, not many miles from our home. He also maintains a cozy camp at this place, for the accommodation of tourists and hunting parties, which he conducts up Bright Angel Creek and into the Kaibab Forest. It was while returning from such a hunting trip that we first met Rust. Many are the trips we have taken with him since then, Emery, with his wife and the baby, even, making the "crossing" and the eighty-mile horseback ride to his home in Kanab, while I had continued on through to Salt Lake City. Rust had been the first to tell us of Galloway and his boating methods; and had given us a practical demonstration on the river. Naturally there was no one we would have been more pleased to see at that place, than Rust.

In our mail we found a letter from him, stating, among other things, that he had camped the night before on the plateau, a few hundred feet above a certain big rapid, well known through this section as the Soap Creek Rapid. This locality is credited with being the scene of the first fatality which overtook the Brown-Stanton expedition; Brown being upset and drowned in the next rapid which followed, after having portaged the Soap Creek Rapid. Rust wrote also that there was a shore along the rapid, so there would be no difficulty in making the portage; and concluded by saying that he had a very impressive dream about us that night, the second of its kind since we had started on our journey.

We understood from this that he had certain misgivings about this rapid, and took his dream to be a sort of a warning. Rust should have known us better. With all the perversity of human nature that letter made me want to run that rapid if it were possible. Why run the rapid, and get a moving picture as it was being done. Then we could show Rust how well we had learned our lesson! So I thought as we returned to the buildings near the dredge, but said nothing of what was in my mind to Emery, making the mental reservation that I would see the rapid first and decide afterwards.

The foreman of the placer mines called us into his office that evening, and suggested that it might be a good plan to go over our boats thoroughly before we left, and offered us the privilege of using their workshop, with all its conveniences, for any needed repairs. He also let us have a room in one of the buildings for our photographic work.

This foreman mourned the loss of a friend who had recently been drowned at the ferry. It seemed that the floods which had preceded us, especially that part which came down the San Juan River, had been something tremendous, rising 45 feet at the ferry, where the river was 400 feet wide; and rising much higher in the narrow portions of Glen Canyon. Great masses of driftwood had floated down, looking almost like a continuous raft. When the river had subsided somewhat, an attempt was made to cross with the ferry. The foreman and his friend, with two others, and a team of horses hitched to a wagon, were on the ferry. When in midstream it overturned in the swollen current. Three of the men escaped, the other man and the horses were drowned.

A careful search had been made for the body to a point a few miles down the river, then the canyon closed in and they could go no farther. The body was never recovered. It is seldom that the Colorado River gives up its dead. The heavy sands collect in the clothes, and a body sinks much quicker than in ordinary water. Any object lodged on the bottom is soon covered with a sand-bar. The foreman knew this, of course; yet he wished us to keep a lookout for the body, which might, by some chance, have caught on the shore, when the water receded. This was as little as any one would do, and we gave him our promise to keep a careful watch.



CHAPTER XVII



A NIGHT OF THRILLS

We declined the offer of a roof that night, preferring to sleep in the open here, for the evening was quite warm. We went to work the next morning when the whistle sounded at the dredge. Beyond caulking a few leaks in the boats, little was done with them. The tin receptacles holding our photographic plates and films were carefully coated with a covering of melted paraffine; for almost anything might happen, in the one hundred miles of rapid water that separated us from our home.

Lee's Ferry was an interesting place, both for its old and its new associations. This had long been the home of John D. Lee, well known for the part he took in the Mountain Meadow Massacre, and for which he afterwards paid the death penalty. Here Lee had lived for many years, making few visits to the small settlements to the north, but on one of these visits he was captured. There were six or seven other buildings near the large stone building where we took our meals, so arranged that they made a short street, the upper row being built against a cliff of rock and shale, the other row being placed halfway between this row and the river. These buildings were all of rock, of which there was no lack, plastered with adobe, or mud. One, we were told, had been Lee's stronghold, it was a square building, with a few very small windows, and with loopholes in the sides. At the time of our visit it was occupied by two men; one, a young Englishman, recently arrived from South Africa—a remittance-man, in search of novelty—the other a grizzled forty-niner. Much could be written about this interesting group of men, and their alluring employment. There were some who had followed this work through all the camps of the West—to Colorado, to California, and to distant Alaska as well, they had journeyed; but it is doubtful if, in all their wanderings, they had seen any camp more strangely located than this, hemmed in with canyon walls. To us, their dredge and the steamboat up the river seemed as if they had been taken from the pages of some romance, or bit of fiction, and placed before us for our entertainment.

There were other men as well, just as interesting m their way as the "old-timers," the sons of some of the owners of this proposition,—clean-cut young fellows,—working side by side with the veterans, as enthusiastic as if on their college campus.

One feature about the dredge interested us greatly. This was a tube, or sucker, held suspended by a derrick above a float, and operated by compressed air. The tube was dropped into the sand at the bottom of the river, and would eat its way into it, bringing up rocks the size of one's fist, along with the gravel and sand. In a few hours a hole, ten or fifteen feet in depth and ten feet in diameter, would be excavated. Then the tube was raised, the float was moved, and the work started again. The coarse sand and gravel, carried by a stream of water, was returned to the river, after passing over the riffles; the screenings which remained passed over square metal plates—looking like sheets of tin—covered with quicksilver. These plates were cleaned with a rubber window-cleaner, and the entire residue was saved in a heavy metal pot, ready for the chemist.

One day only was needed for our work, and by evening we were ready for the next plunge. We might have enjoyed a longer stay with these men, but stronger than this desire was our anxiety to reach our home, separated from us by a hundred miles of river, no extended part of the distance being entirely free from rapids. We had written to the Grand Canyon, bidding them look for our signal fire in Bright Angel Creek Canyon, in from seven to ten days, and planned to leave on the following morning. Nothing held us now except the hope that the mail, which was due that evening, might bring us a letter, although that was doubtful, for we were nearly a week ahead of our schedule as laid out at Green River, Utah.

As we had anticipated, there was no mail for us, so we turned to inspect the mail carrier. He was a splendid specimen of the Navajo Indian,—a wrestler of note amoung his people, we were told,—large and muscular, and with a peculiar springy, slouchy walk that gave one the impression of great reserve strength. He had ridden that day from Tuba, an agency on their reservation, about seventy miles distant. This was the first sign of an Indian that we had seen in this section, although we had been travelling along the northern boundary of their reservation since leaving the mouth of the San Juan. These Indians have no use for the river, being children of the desert, rather than of the water. Beyond an occasional crossing and swimming their horses at easy fords, they make no attempt at its navigation, even in the quiet water of Glen Canyon.

Some of the men showed this Indian our boats, and told him of our journey. He smiled, and shrugged his massive shoulders as much as to say, he "would believe it when he saw it." He had an opportunity to see us start, at least, on the following morning.

Before leaving, we climbed a 300-foot mound on the left bank of the Paria River, directly opposite the Lee ranch. This mound is known as Lee's Lookout. Whether used by Lee or not, it had certainly served that purpose at some time. A circular wall of rock was built on top the mound, and commanded an excellent view of all the approaches to the junction of the rivers. This spot is of particular interest to the geologist, for a great fault, indicated by the Vermilion Cliffs, marks the division between Glen Canyon and Marble Canyon. This line of cliffs extends to the south for many miles across the Painted Desert, and north into Utah for even a greater distance, varying in height from two hundred feet at the southern end to as many thousand feet in some places to the north. Looking to the west, we could see that here was another of those sloping uplifts of rock, with the river cutting down, increasing the depth of the canyon with every mile.

We had now descended about 2900 feet since leaving Green River City, Wyoming, not a very great fall for the distance travelled if an average is taken, but a considerable portion of the distance was on quiet water, as we have noted, with a fall of a foot or two to the mile, and with alternate sections only containing bad water. We were still at an elevation of 3170 feet above the sea-level, and in the 283 miles of canyon ahead of us—Marble Canyon and the Grand Canyon combined—the river descends 2330 feet, almost a continuous series of rapids from this point to the end of the Grand Canyon.

After a hasty survey from our vantage point, we returned to the river and prepared to embark. As we left the dredge, the work was closed down for a few minutes, and the entire crowd of men, about forty in number, stood on an elevation to watch us run the first rapid. The Indian had crossed to the south side of the to feed his horse and caught a glimpse of us as we went past him. Running pell-mell down to his boat, he crossed the river and joined the group on the bank. About this time we were in the grip of the first rapid, a long splashy one, with no danger whatever, but large enough to keep us busy until we had passed from view.

A few miles below this, after running a pair of small rapids, we reached a larger one, known as the Badger Creek Rapid, with a twenty-foot drop in the first 250 feet, succeeded by a hundred yards of violent water. Emery had a little difficulty in this rapid, when his boat touched a rock which turned the boat sideways in the current, and he was nearly overturned in the heavy waves which followed. As it was, we were both drenched.

About the middle of the afternoon, twelve miles below Lee's Ferry, we reached the Soap Creek Rapid of which we had heard so much. The rapid had a fall of twenty-five feet, and was a quarter of a mile long. Most of the fall occurred in the first fifty yards. The river had narrowed down until it was less than two hundred feet wide at the beginning of the descent. Many rocks were smattered all through the upper end, especially at the first drop. On the very brink or edge of the first fall, there was a submerged rock in the centre of the channel, making an eight-foot fall over the rock. A violent current, deflected from the left shore, shot into this centre and added to the confusion. Twelve-foot waves from the conflicting currents, played leap-frog, jumping over or through each other alternately. Clearly there was no channel on that side. On the right or north side of the stream it looked more feasible, as the water shot down a sloping chute over a hundred feet before meeting with an obstruction. This came in the shape of two rocks, one about thirty feet below the other. To run the rapid this first rock would have to be passed before any attempt could be made to pull away from the second rock, which was quite close to the shore. Once past that there was a clear channel to the end of the rapid, if the centre, which contained many rocks, was avoided. Below the rapid was the usual whirlpool, then a smaller rapid, running under the left wall. This second rapid was the one that had been so fatal for Brown. The Soap Creek rapid in many ways was not as bad as some we had gone over in Cataract Canyon, but there were so many complications that we hesitated a long time before coming to a decision that we would make an attempt with one boat, depending on our good luck which had brought us through so many times, as much as we depended on our handling of the boat.

It was planned that I should make the first attempt while Emery remained with the motion-picture camera just below the rock that we most feared, with the agreement that he was to get a picture of the upset if one occurred, then run to the lower end of the rapid with a rope and a life-preserver.

After adjusting life-preservers I returned to my boat and was soon on the smooth water above the rapid, holding my boat to prevent her from being swept over the rock in the centre, jockeying for the proper position before I would allow her to be carried into the current. Once in, it seemed but an instant until I was past the first rock, and almost on top of the second. I was pulling with every ounce of strength, and was almost clear of the rock when the stern touched it gently. I had no idea the boat would overturn, but thought she would swing around the rock, heading bow first into the stream, as had been done before on several occasions. Instead of this she was thrown on her side with the bottom of the boat held against the rock while I found myself thrown out of the boat, but hanging to the gunwale. Then the boat swung around and instantly turned upright while I scrambled back into the cockpit. Looking over my shoulder, when I had things well in hand again, I saw my brother was still at the camera, white as a sheet, but turning at the crank as if our entire safety depended on it. After I landed the water-filled boat, however, he confessed to me that he had no idea whether he had caught the upset or not, as he may have resumed the work when he saw that I was safe.

Then we went to work to find out what damage was done. First we found that the case, which was supposed to be waterproof, had a half-inch of water inside, but fortunately none of our films were wet. Some plates which we had just exposed and which were still in the holders were soaked. The cameras also had suffered. We hurriedly wiped off the surplus water and piled these things on the shore, then emptied the boat of a few barrels of water.

This one experience, I suppose, should have been enough for me with that rapid, but I foolishly insisted on making another trial at it with the Edith, for I felt sure I could make it if I only had another chance, and the fact that Emery had the empty boat at the end of the rapid and could rescue me if an upset occurred greatly lessened the danger. The idea of making a portage, with the loss of nearly a day, did not appeal to me.

Emery agreed to this reluctantly, and advised waiting until morning, for it was growing dusk, but with the remark "I will sleep better with both boats tied at the lower end of the rapid," I returned to the Edith. To make a long story short I missed my channel, and was carried over the rock in the centre of the stream. The Edith had bravely mounted the first wave, and was climbing the second comber, standing almost on end, seemed to me, when the wave crested over the stern while the current shooting it from the side struck the submerged bow and she fell back in the water upside down. It was all done so quickly, I hardly knew what had occurred, but found myself in the water, whirling this way and that, holding to the right oar with a death-grip. I wondered if the strings would hold, and felt a great relief when the oar stopped slipping down,—as the blade reached the ring. It was the work of a second to climb the oar, and I found I was under the cockpit. Securing a firm hold on the gunwale, which had helped us so often, I got on the outside of the boat, thinking I might climb on top. About that time one of the largest waves broke over me, knocking me on the side of the head as if with a solid object, nearly tearing me from the boat. After that I kept as close to the boat as possible, paddling with my feet to keep them clear of rocks. Then the suction of the boat caught them and dragged them under, and for the rest of the rapid I had all I could do to hang to the boat. As the rapid dwindled I began to look for Emery, but was unable to see him, for it was now growing quite dark, but I could see a fire on shore that he had built. I tried to call but was strangled with the breaking waves; my voice was drowned in the roar of the rapid. One of the life-preservers was torn loose and floated ahead of me. Finally I got an answer, and could see that Emery had launched his boat. As he drew near I told him to save the life-preserver, which he did, then hurriedly pulled for me. I remarked with a forced laugh, to reassure him, "Gee, Emery, this water's cold."

He failed to join in my levity, however, and said with feeling, "Thank the good Lord you are here!" and down in my heart I echoed his prayer of thanks.

Somehow I had lost all desire to successfully navigate the Soap Creek Rapid.

But our troubles were not entirely over. Emery had pulled me in after a futile attempt or two, with a hold sometimes used by wrestlers, linking his arm in mine, leaning forward, and pulling me in over his back I was so numbed by the cold that I could do little to help him, after what, I suppose, was about a quarter of an hour's struggle in the water; although it seemed much longer than that to me.

We then caught the Edith and attempted to turn her over, but before this could be done we were dragged into the next rapid. Emery caught up the oars, while I could do nothing but hold to the upturned boat, half filled with water, striving to drag us against the wall on the left side of the stream. It was no small task to handle the two boats in this way, but Emery made it; then, when he thought we were sure of a landing, the Edith dragged us into the river again. Two more small rapids were run as we peered through the darkness for a landing. Finally we reached the shore over a mile below the Soap Creek Rapid. We were on the opposite side of the stream from that where we had unloaded the Defiance. This material would have to stay where it was that night.

While bailing the water from the Edith we noticed a peculiar odour, and thought for a while that it might be the body of the man who was drowned at the ferry, but later we found it came from a green cottonwood log that had become water-soaked, and was embedded in the sand, close to our landing. It was Emery's turn to do the greater part of the camp work that night, while I was content to hug the fire, wrapped in blankets, waiting for the coffee to boil.



CHAPTER XVIII



MARBLE HALLS AND MARBLE WALLS

There was little of the spectacular in our work the next day as we slowly and laboriously dragged an empty boat upstream against the swift-running current, taking advantage of many little eddies, but finding much of the shore swept clean. I had ample opportunity to ponder on the wisdom of my attempt to save time by running the Soap Creek Rapid instead of making a portage, while we carried our loads over the immense boulders that banked the stream, down to a swift piece of water, past which we could not well bring the boats or while we developed the wet plates from the ruined plate-holders. It was with no little surprise that we found all the plates, except a few which were not uniformly wet and developed unevenly, could be saved. It took a day and a half to complete all this work.

Marble Canyon was now beginning to narrow up with a steep, boulder-covered slope on either side, three or four hundred feet high; with a sheer wall of dark red limestone of equal height directly above that. There was also a plateau of red sandstone and distant walls topped with light-coloured rock, the same formations with which we were familiar in the Grand Canyon. The inner gorge had narrowed from a thousand feet or more down to four hundred feet, the slope at the river was growing steeper and gradually disappearing, and each mile of travel had added a hundred feet or more to the height of the walls. Soon after resuming our journey that afternoon, the slope disappeared altogether, and the sheer walls came down close to the water. There were few places where one could climb out, had we desired to do so. This hard limestone wall, which Major Powell had named the marble wall, had a disconcerting way of weathering very smooth and sheer, with a few ledges and fewer breaks.

We made a short run that day, going over a few rapids, stopping an hour to make some pictures where an immense rock had fallen from the cliff above into the middle of the river bed, leaving a forty-foot channel on one side, and scarcely any on the other. Below this we found a rapid so much like the Soap Creek Rapid in appearance that a portage seemed advisable. It was evening when we got the Edith to the lower end of this rapid after almost losing her, as we lined her down, and she was wedged under a sloping rock that overhung the rapid. We had two ropes, one at either end, attached to the boat in this case. Emery stood below the rock ready to pull her in when once past the rock. There was a sickening crackling of wood as the deck of the boat wedged under and down to the level of the water, and at Emery's call I released the boat, throwing the rope into the river, and hurried to help him. He was almost dragged into the water as the boat swung around fortunately striking against a sand-bank, instead of the many rocks that lined the shore. We were working with a stream different from the Green River, we found, and the Defiance was taken from the water the next day and slowly worked, one end at a time, over the rocks, up to a level sand-bank, twenty-five or thirty feet above the river. Then we put rollers under her, and worked her down past the rapid. This work was little to our liking, for the boats, now pretty well water-soaked, weighed considerably more than their original five hundred pounds' weight.

A few successful plunges soon brought back our former confidence, and we continued to run all other rapids that presented themselves. This afternoon we passed the first rapid we remembered having seen, where we could not land at its head before running it. A slightly higher stage of water, however, would have made many such rapids. Just below this point we found the body of a bighorn mountain-sheep floating in an eddy. It was impossible to tell just how he came to his death. There was no sign of any great fall that we could see. He had a splendid pair of horns, which we would have liked to have had at home, but which we did not care to amputate and carry with us.