82 EXPLORATION OF THE CANONS OF THE COLORADO. 
the surface, sometimes rising few or many feet above; and island ledges, and 
island pinnacles, and island towers break the swift course of the stream into 
chutes, and eddies, and whirlpools. We soon reach a place where a creek 
comes in from the left, and just below, the channel is choked with boulders, 
which have washed down this lateral canon and formed a dam, over which 
there is a fall of thirty or forty feet; but on the boulders we can get foot 
hold, and we make a portage. 
Three more such dams are found. Over one we make a portage; at 
the other two we find chutes, through which we can run. 
As we proceed, the granite rises higher, until nearly a thousand feet of 
the lower part of the walls are composed of this rock. 
About eleven o'clock we hear a great roar ahead, and approach it very 
cautiously. The sound grows louder and louder as we run, and at last we 
find ourselves above a long, broken fall, with ledges and pinnacles of rock 
obstructing the river. There is a descent of, perhaps, seventy five or eighty 
feet in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves on 
the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad, white foam. We can land just 
above, but there is no foot-hold on either side by which we can make a port 
age. It is nearly a thousand feet to the top of the granite, so it will be 
impossible to cany our boats around, though we can climb to the summit up 
a side gulch, and, passing along a mile or two, can descend to the river. 
This we find on examination ; but such a portage would be impracticable for 
us, and we must run the rapid, or abandon the river. There is no hesitation. 
We step into our boats, push off and away we go, first on smooth but swift 
water, then we strike a glassy wave, and ride to its top, down again into the 
trough, up again on a higher wave, and down and up on waves higher and 
still higher, until we strike one just as it curls back, and a breaker rolls 
over our little boat. Still, on we speed, shooting .past projecting rocks, till 
the little boat is caught in a whirlpool, and spun around several times. At 
last we pull out again into the stream, and now the other boats have passed 
us. The open compartment of the "Emma Dean" is filled with water, and 
every breaker rolls over us. Hurled back from a rock, now on this side, 
now on that, we are carried into an eddy, in which we struggle for a few 
minutes, and are then out again, the breakers still rolling over us. Our boat 
