14 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
Entering Flaming Gorge, we quickly run through it on a swift cur 
rent, and emerge into a little park. Half a mile below, the river wheels 
sharply to the left, and we turned into another canon cut into the mountain. 
We enter the narrow passage. On either side, the walls rapidly increase in 
altitude. On the left are overhanging ledges and cliffs five hundred a 
thousand fifteen hundred feet high. 
On the right, the rocks are broken and ragged, and the water fills the 
channel from cliff to cliff. Now the river turns abruptly around a point to 
the right, and the waters plunge swiftly down among great rocks ; and here 
we have our first experience with canon rapids. I stand up on the deck of 
my boat to seek a way among the wave beaten rocks. All untried as we 
are with such waters, the moments are filled with intense anxiety. Soon 
our boats reach the swift current ; a stroke or two, now on this side, now on 
that, and we thread the narrow passage with exhilarating velocity, mount 
ing the high waves, whose foaming crests dash over us, and plunging into the 
troughs, until we reach the quiet water below; and then comes a feeling of 
great relief. Our first rapid is run. Another mile, and we come into the 
valley again. 
Let me explain this canon. Where the river turns to the left above, it 
takes a course directly into the mountain, penetrating to its very heart, then 
wheels back upon itself, and runs out into the valley from which it started 
only half a mile below the point at which it entered ; so the canon is in the 
form of an elongated letter U, with the apex in the center of the mountain. 
We name it Horseshoe Canon. 
Soon we leave the valley, and enter another short canon, very narrow 
at first, but widening below as the caiion walls increase in height. Here 
we discover the mouth of a beautiful little creek, coming down through its 
narrow water worn cleft. Just at its entrance there is a park of two or three 
hundred acres, walled on every side by almost vertical cliffs, hundreds of 
feet in altitude, with three gateways through the walls one up, another 
down the river, and a third passage through which the creek comes in. The 
river is broad, deep, and quiet, and its waters mirror towering rocks. 
Kingfishers are playing about the streams, and so we adopt as names 
