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Show RIPPLING BROOK. 29 The "Maid of the Canonn is lost, so it seems; but she drifts some distance, and swings into an eddy, in which she spins about, until we arrive with the small boat, and rescue her. Soon we are on our way again, and stop at the mouth of a little brook, on the right, for a late dinner. This brook comes down from the distant mountains, in a deep side canon. We set out to explore it, but are soon cut off from farther progress up the gorge by a high rock, over which the brook glides in a smooth sheet. The rock is not quite vertical, and the water does not plunge over in a fall. Then we climb up to the left for an hour, and are a thousand feet above the river, and six hundred above the brook. Just before us, the canon divides, a little stream coming down on the right, and another on the left, and we can look away up either of these canons, through an ascending vista, to cliffs and crags and towers, a mile back, and two thousand feet overhead. To the right, a dozen gleaming cascades are seen. Pines and firs stand on the rocks, and aspens overhang the brooks. The rocks below are red and brown, set in deep shadows, but above, they are buff and vermilion, and stand in the sunshine. The light above, made more brilliant by the bright-tinted rocks, and the shadows below more gloomy by the somber hues of the brown walls, increase the apparent depths of the canons, and it seems a long way up to the world of sunshine and open sky, and a long way down to the bottom of the canon glooms. Never before have I received such an impression of the vast heights of these canon walls; not even at the Cliff of the Harp, where the very heavens seemed to rest on their summits. We sit on some overhanging rocks, and enjoy the scene for a time, listening to the music of falling waters away up the canons. We name this Rippling Brook. Late in the afternoon we make a short run to the mouth of another little creek, coming down from the left into an alcove filled with luxuriant vegetation. Here camp is made with a group of cedars on one side and a dense mass of box-elders and dead willows on the other. I go up to explore the alcove. While away a whirlwind comes, scattering the fire among the dead willows and cedar-spray, and soon there is a conflagration. The men rush for the boats, leaving all they cannot readily |
