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Show CHAPTER VIII. THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO . .August 13.-W e are now ready to start on our way down the Great Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, are chafing each other, as they are tossed•by the fretful river. They ride high and buoya.nt, for their loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations remaining. The flour has been resifted through the mosquito net sieve; the spoiled bacon has been dried, and the worst of it boiled ; the few pounds of dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal bulk; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river; but we have a large sack of coffee. The lighting of the boats bas this advantage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry when we make a portage. We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the great river shrinks into insignificance, as it dashas its angry waves again~t the walls and cliffs, that rise to the world above; they are but puny ripples, and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands, or lost among the boulders. We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the jests are ghastly. With some eagerness, and some anxiety, and some misgiving, we enter the catlon below, and are carried along by the swift water through walls which rise from its very edge. They have the same structure as we noticed yesterday-tiers of irregular shelves below, and, above these, steep slopes to the foot of marble cliffs. We run six miles in a little more than half an l!'iguro 27.-Viow from Cn111p at tho mouth of tho Littlo Coloru.llo, lookiug wotlt. |
