A WILDERNESS OF BOOKS. 83 
is unmanageable, but she cannot sink, and we drift down another hundred 
yards, through breakers; how, we scarcely know. We find the other boats 
have turned into an eddy at the foot of the fall, and are waiting to catch us 
as we come, for the men have seen that our boat is swamped. They push 
out as we come near, and pull us in against the wall. We bail our boat, 
and on we go again. 
The walls, now, are more than a mile in height a vertical distance 
difficult to appreciate. Stand on the south steps of the Treasury building, 
in Washington, and look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol Park, 
and measure this distance overhead, and imagine cliffs to extend to that alti 
tude, and you will understand what I mean; or, stand at Canal street, in 
New York, and look up Broadway to Grace Church, and you have about 
the distance; or, stand at Lake street bridge, in Chicago, and look down 
to the Central Depot, and you have it again. 
A thousand feet of this is up through granite crags, then steep slopes 
and perpendicular cliffs rise, one above another, to the summit. The gorge 
is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, with crags and 
angular projections on the walls, which, cut in many places by side canons, 
seem to be a vast wilderness of rocks. Down in these grand, gloomy depths 
we glide, ever listening, for the mad waters keep up their roar; ever watch 
ing, ever peering ahead, for the narrow canon is winding, and the river is 
closed in so that we can see but a few hundred yards, and what there may 
be below we know not; but we listen for falls, and watch for rocks, or stop 
now and then, in the bay of a recess, to admire the gigantic scenery. And 
ever, as we go, there is some new pinnacle or tower, some crag or peak, 
some distant view of the upper plateau, some strange shaped rock, or some 
deep, narrow side canon. Then we come to another broken fall, which 
appears more difficult than the one we ran this morning. 
A small creek comes in on the right, and the first fall of the water is 
over boulders, which have been carried down by this lateral stream. We 
land at its mouth, and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall. It 
' seems possible to let down with lines, at least a part of the way, from point 
to point, along the right hand wall. So we make a portage over the first 
rocks, and find footing on some boulders below. Then we let down one of 
