at half past one at night, in a little sleeping village, lit 

 by the moon but absolutely silent. Each house was set in 

 a luxuriant garden, watered by an irrigating stream led 

 down the village midst. Continuing on until I reached 

 again the river at an upper bend without discovering any 

 sign of life, I turned and approached a house, whose 

 owner, being waked and told of a stranger who had lost 

 his way, promptly double-barred his door and sent me 

 on. But presently, through the kind offices of the post- 

 master, whose residence I ascertained through the barred 

 door, I found myself entertained with kindest hospi- 

 tality, my horse turned loose in an enclosure to feed at 

 will on stacked alfalfa hay, and I provided with a great 

 bowl of bread and milk while my host and his whole 

 family — risen for the occasion — sat round to hear of my 

 adventure, and tell in turn of others who had lost their 

 way in that wide wilderness. 



The next day, gladdened by a morning sight of those 

 well cultivated gardens, filled with late summer fruits 

 and vegetables, with grapes and the tall stalks of sugar- 

 cane and corn, and set with apple-trees and fig-trees, 

 peach-trees and thick-foliaged mulberries, I rode on up 

 the river and joined my companions at another village, 

 a dozen miles above ; and then rode on with them into the 

 canyon we had come to see. 



It was well worth the coming; a great ^'intaglio," two 

 thousand feet or more in depth, cut by the river into 

 deep red sandstone that rose sheer from the level bot- 

 tom of the valley in great rounded cliffs. Above, 

 strangely contrasting with it, rose great cones of sand- 

 stone of the weird gray color of the Austrian Dolomites, 

 softer in texture and too steep and smooth to harbor 

 vegetation. A sandy soil covered the valley bottom, de- 

 posited by the river in its times of flood; trees grew over 

 it, and open patches here and there had been planted 

 to corn by people from the villages below. The color 

 of the sandstone was extraordinarily rich and beautiful, 



9 



