12 JOHN BURROUGHS 



The river above the main fall is split up into several 

 strands by isolated masses of towering rocks; each of 

 these strands ends in a beautiful fall, forty or fifty feet in 

 height; then the several currents unite for the final plunge 

 down a precipice of two hundred and fifty feet. To get 

 a different, and if possible, a closer view of the falls, we 

 climbed down the side of the chasm by means of ladders 

 and footsteps cut in the rock and soil, to the margin of 

 the river below. Here we did homage at the foot of the 

 grand spectacle and gazed upward into its awful face. 

 The canyon below the falls is so broad that the river has 

 an easy egress, hence there is nothing of that terrible 

 agony upon the face of the waters that we see in the 

 gorge below Niagara. Niagara is much the more impos- 

 ing spectacle. Shoshone is the more ideal and poetic. 

 It is a fall from an abyss into a deeper abyss. 



A few miles below the falls are still other wonders in 

 the shape of underground rivers which leap out of huge 

 openings in the side of the canyon — a subterranean water 

 system cut across by a larger river. The streams that 

 emerge in this dramatic manner are doubtless the same 

 that suddenly take to earth far to the northward. Why 

 they also did not cut canyons in the plain is an interesting 

 problem. 



In the trees about the hamlet of Shoshone I first made 

 acquaintance with the house finch, a bird with quivering 

 flight and bright cheery song. It suggests our purple 

 finch and seems to be as much of a house and home bird 

 as the ugly English sparrow. The Arkansas flycatcher 

 also was common here, taking the place of our kingbird. 



In Idaho we reach a land presided over by the goddess 

 Irrigation. Here she has made the desert bloom as the 

 rose. We see her servitors even in the streets of large 

 towns in the shape of great water wheels turned by the 



