CHAPTER VIII. 
THE GRAND CANON OF THE COLORADO. 
August 13. We are now ready to start on our way down the Great 
Unknown. Our boats, tied to a common stake, are chafing each other, as 
they are tossed by the fretful river. They ride high and buoyant, for their 
loads are lighter than we could desire. We have but a month's rations 
remaining. The flour has been resifted through the mosquito net sieve ; the 
spoiled bacon has been dried, and the worst of it boiled ; the few pounds of 
dried apples have been spread in the sun, and reshrunken to their normal 
bulk ; the sugar has all melted, and gone on its way down the river ; but 
we have a large sack of coffee. The lighting of the boats has this advan 
tage: they will ride the waves better, and we shall have but little to carry 
when we make a portage. 
We are three quarters of a mile in the depths of the earth, and the 
great river shrinks into insignificance, as it daskas its angry waves against 
the walls and cliffs, that rise to the world above ; they are but puny ripples, 
and we but pigmies, running up and down the sands, or lost among the 
boulders. 
We have an unknown distance yet to run; an unknown river yet to 
explore. What falls there are, we know not; what rocks beset the channel, 
we know not; what walls rise over the river, we know not. Ah, well! we 
may conjecture many things. The men talk as cheerfully as ever; jests are 
bandied about freely this morning; but to me the cheer is somber and the 
jests are ghastly. 
With some eagerness, and some anxiety, and some misgiving, we enter 
the canon below, and are carried along by the swift water through walls 
which rise from its very edge. They have the same structure as we noticed 
yesterday tiers of irregular shelves below, and, above these, steep slopes 
to the foot of marble cliffs. We run six miles in a little more than half an 
