323 
Vesey’s Paradise 
their demands, though they gave us no serious trouble. It 
is exasperating, however, to be turned around against one’s 
will. The canyon at the top for a considerable distance was 
not over three-quarters of a mile wide. The depth was now 
from fifteen hundred to eighteen hundred feet. There were 
always rapids following quickly one after another, but so often 
they were free from rocks, the dangerous part of most rapids, 
that we were able to sail through them in triumph. On the 
20th, out of thirteen sharp descents, we easily ran twelve, all 
in a distance of less than seven miles. The average width of 
the river was one hundred and twenty-five feet, while the walls 
rose to over two thousand feet, and at the top the canyon was 
about a mile and a quarter from brink to brink. This brought 
us to Vesey’s Paradise, so named after a botanist friend of his, 
by Powell on the first descent. It was only a lot of ferns, 
mosses, and similar plants growing around two springs that 
issued from the cliffs on the right about seventy-five feet above 
the river, and rippled in silver threads to the bottom, but as it 
was the first green spot since leaving the Paria its appearance 
was striking and attractive to the eye that had been baffled in 
all directions except above, in a search for something besides 
red. Now the narrow, terraced canyon, often vertical on both 
sides for several hundred feet above the water, grew' ever 
deeper and deeper, two thousand, twenty-five hundred, three 
thousand feet and more, as the impetuous torrent slashed its 
way down, till it finally seemed to me as if we were actually 
sailing into the inner heart of the world. The sensation on 
the first expedition, when each dark new bend was a dark new 
mystery, must have been something to quite overpower the 
imagination, for then it was not known that, by good manage¬ 
ment, a boat could pass through this Valley of the Shadow of 
Death, and survive. Dowm, and down, and ever down, roaring 
and leaping and throwing its spiteful spray against the hamper¬ 
ing rocks the terrible river ran, carrying our boats along with 
it like little wisps of straw in the midst of a Niagara, the ter¬ 
raced walls around us sometimes fantastically eroded into 
galleries, balconies, alcoves, and Gothic caves that lent to 
them an additional weird and wonderful aspect, while the 
