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Show 82 EXPLORATION OF THE OANONS OF THE COLORADO. the surface, sometimes rising few or many feet above; and island ledges, and island pinnacles, and island towers break the swift course of the stream into chutes, and eddies, and whirlpools. We soon reach a place where a creek comes in from the left, and just below, the channel is choked with boulders, which have washed down this lateral canon and formed a dam, over which there is a fall of thirty or forty feet; but on the boulders we can get foothold, and we make a portage. Three more such dams are found. Over one we make a portage; at the other two we find chutes, through which we can run. As we proceed, the granite rises higher, until nearly a thousand feet of the low()r part of the walls are composed of this rock. About eleven o'clock we hear a great roar ahead, and approach it very cautiously. The sound grows louder and ·louder as we run, and at last we find ourselves above a long, broken fall, with ledges and pinnacles of rock obstructing the river. There is a descent of, perhaps, seventy five or eighty feet in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves on the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad, white foam. We can land just above, but there is no foot-bold on either siue by which we can make a portage. It is nearly a thousand feet to the top of the granite, ~o it will bo impossible to carry our boats around, though we can climb to the summit up a side gulch, and, passing along a mile or two, can descend to the river. This we find on examination; but such a portage would be impracticable for us, and we must run the rapid, or abandon the river. There is no hesitation. We step into our boats, push off and away we go, first on smooth but swift water, then we strike a glassy wave, and ride to its top, down again into the trough, up ag~.in on a higher wave, and down and up on waves higher and still higher, until we strike one just as it curls back, and a breaker rolls over our little boat. Still, on we speed, shooting past projecting rocks, till the little boat is caught in a whirlpool, ana spun around several times. At la::;t we pull out again into the stream, aud now the other boats have passed us. The open compartment of the "Emma Dean:' is filled with water, and every break~r rolls over us. Hurled back from a rock, now on this side, now on that, we are carried into an eddy, in which we struggle for a few minutes, and are then out again, the breakers still rolling over us. Our boat Figuro 28.- Ruoniug n. mpid. I |
