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THEY TAKE TO THE RIVER. 205 
banks, from which they collected enough to enable them to 
construct a raft capable of floating themselves, with their 
arms and provisions. This raft consisted of three sticks of 
cotton-wood, about ten feet in length and eight inches in 
diameter, lashed firmly together with their lariots. Procuring 
two stout poles with which to guide the raft, and fastening 
the bag of provisions to the-logs, they waited for midnight to 
come with the waning moon, so as to drift off unnoticed by 
the Indians. They did not consider that even the sun looked 
down into that chasm for but one short hour in the twenty- 
four, and then left it to the angry waters and blackening 
shadows; and that the faint moonlight reaching the bottom 
of the cafion would hardly serve to reveal the horror of their 
situation. Midnight came, as they thought, by the measure- 
ment of the dark, dreary hours; when, seizing the poles, 
they untied the rope that held the raft, and, tossed about by 
the current, they rushed through the yawning cafion on their 
adventurous voyage to an unknown landing. Through the 
long night they clung to the raft as it dashed against half- 
concealed rocks, or whirled about like a plaything in some 
eddy, whose white foam was perceptible even in the blackness. 
_ They prayed for the daylight, which came at last, and with 
it a smoother current and less rugged banks, though the cafion 
walls appeared to have increased in height. Early in the 
morning (August 25th) they found a spot where they could 
make a landing, and went ashore. After eating a little of 
their water-soaked provisions, they returned and strengthened 
their raft by the addition of some light pieces of cedar, which 
had been lodged in clefts of the rocks by recent floods. White 
estimates the width of the river where they landed at 200 
yards, and the current at three miles per hour. After a short 
ay at this place they again embarked, and during the rest of 
