188 The Colorado River 
The universal dread of the Colorado and its gorges had by 
this time considerably augmented. The public imagination 
pictured the roaring flood ploughing its dismal channel through 
dark subterranean galleries where human life would not be 
worth a single drop of tossing spray; or leaping at a bound 
over precipices beside which the seething plunge of Niagara 
was but a toy. No one could deny these weird tales. No one 
Part of a Rapid. 
Photograph by J. K. Hillers. U. S. Colo. Riv. Exp. 
knew. But Powell was fortified by Science, and he surmised 
that nowhere would he encounter any obstruction which his 
ingenuity could not surmount. 
I remember one morning, on the second voyage, when we 
had made an early start and the night-gloom still lingered in 
the depths of Marble Canyon as we bore down on a particularly 
narrow place where the river turned a sharp bend to disappear 
