220 
The Colorado River 
before encountered. There was absolutely no way of telling 
what the waters might do in such a formation, which ran up 
till a thousand feet of it stood above their heads, supporting 
more than four thousand feet more of sedimentary rocks, 
making a grand total of between five thousand and six thou¬ 
sand feet. The same day on which they entered the granite 
they arrived, after running, and portaging around, several bad 
rapids, at a terrific fall, announced by a loud roar like the 
steady boom of Niagara, reverberating back and forth from 
wall to wall, and filling the whole gorge with its ominous note. 
The river was beaten to a solid sheet of reeling foam for a third 
of a mile. There was but one choice, but one path for the boats, 
and that lay through the midst of it, for on each side the 
waves pounded violently against the jagged cliffs which so 
closely hemmed them in. Men might climb up to the top of 
the granite and find their way around the obstruction, one 
thousand feet above it, descending again a mile or two down, 
but they could not take the boats over such a road. They 
must, therefore, run the place, a fall of about eighty feet in the 
third of a mile, or give up the descent. So they got into their 
boats and started on the smooth waters, so soon shattered 
into raging billows. Though filled with water, the boats all 
rode successfully and came out below crowned with success. 
Often a rapid is greatly augmented by enormous boulders 
which have been washed into the river from some side canyon, 
and, acting like a dam, block the water up and cause it to roar 
and fret tenfold more. Black and dismal is this granite gorge; 
sharp and terrible the rapids, whose sheeted foam becomes 
fairly iridescent by contrast. The method of working around 
some of the worst places is illustrated well by the following 
extract: 
“ We land and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall. It 
seems possible to let down with lines, at least 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 be¬ 
low. Then we let down one of the boats to the end of her line, when 
she reaches a corner of the projecting rock, to which one of the men 
