cliffs, and no glint of light remained on the crags above, but the waves were crested with a white that seemed luminous. A great fall broke at the foot of a block of limestone fifty feet high, and rolled back in immense billows. Over the sunken rocks the flood was heaped up into mounds and even cones. The tumult was extraordinary. At a point where the rocks were very near the surface the water was thrown up ten or fifteen feet, and fell back in gentle curves as in a fountain.

On August 3d the party traversed a cañon of diversified features. The walls were still vertical in places, especially near the bends, and the river sweeping round the capes had undermined the cliffs. Sometimes the rocks overarched: again curious narrow glens were found. The men explored the glens, in one of which they discovered a natural stairway several hundred feet high leading to a spring which burst out from an overhanging cliff among aspens and willows, while along the edges of the brooklet there were oaks and other rich vegetation. There were also many side-cañons with walls nearer to each other above than below, giving them the character of grottoes; and there were carved walls, arches, alcoves and monuments, to all of which the collective name of Glen Cañon was given.

One morning the surveyors came to a point where the river filled the entire channel and the walls were sheer to the water's edge. They saw a fall below, and in order to inspect it they pulled up against one of the cliffs, in which was a little shelf or crevice a few feet above their heads. One man stood on the deck of the boat while another climbed over his shoulders into this insecure foothold, along which they passed until it became a shelf which was broken by a chasm some yards farther on. They then returned to the boat and pulled across the stream for some logs which had lodged on the opposite shore, and with which it was intended to bridge the gulf. It was no easy work hauling the wood along the fissure, but with care and patience they accomplished it, and reached a point in the cliffs from which the falls could be seen. It seemed practicable to lower the boats over the stormy waters by holding them with ropes from the cliffs; and this was done successfully, the incident illustrating how laborious their progress sometimes became.

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

THE HEART OF CATARACT CAÑON.

Down these gloomy depths the expedition constantly glided, ever listening and ever peering ahead, for the cañon is winding and they could not see more than a few hundred yards in advance. The view changed every minute as some new crag or pinnacle or glen or peak became visible; but the men were fully engaged listening for rapids and looking for rocks. Navigation was exceedingly difficult, and it was often necessary to hold the boats from ledges in the cliffs as the falls were passed. The river was very deep and the cañon very narrow. The waters boiled and rushed in treacherous currents, which sometimes whirled the boats into the stream or hurried them against the walls. The oars were useless, and each crew labored for its own preservation as its frail vessel was spun round like a top or borne with the speed of a locomotive this way and that.

MARY'S VEIL, A SIDE CAÑON.

While they were thus uncontrollable the boats entered a rapid, and one of them was driven in shore, but as there was no foothold for a portage the men pushed into the stream again. The next minute a reflex wave filled the open compartment and water-logged her: breaker after breaker rolled over her, and one capsized her. The men were thrown out, but they managed to cling to her, and as they were swept down the other boats rescued them.

Heavy clouds rolled in the cañon, filling it with gloom. Sometimes they hung above from wall to wall and formed a roof: then a gust of wind from a side-cañon made a rift in them and the blue heavens were revealed, or they dispersed in patches which settled on the crags, while puffs of vapor issued out of the smaller gulches, and occasionally formed bars across the cañon, one above another, each opening a different vista. When they discharged their rains little rills first trickled down the cliff, and these soon became brooks: the brooks grew into creeks and tumbled down through innumerable cascades, which added their music to the roar of the river. As soon as the rain ceased rills, brooks, creeks and cascades disappeared, their birth and death being equally sudden.

LIGHTHOUSE ROCK IN THE CAÑON OF DESOLATION.

Desolate and inaccessible as the cañon is, many ruins of buildings are found perched upon ledges in the stupendous cliffs. In some instances the mouths of caves have been walled in, and the evidences all point to a race for ever dreading and fortifying itself against an invader. Why did these people chose their embattlements so far away from all tillable land and sources of subsistence? Major Powell suggests this solution of the problem: For a century or two after the settlement of Mexico many expeditions were sent into the country now comprised in Arizona and New Mexico for the purpose of bringing the town-building people under the dominion of the Spanish government. Many of their villages were