her, the first canyons of the Colorado proper, are fifty
miles long and the San Juan comes in at least seventy-five miles below
their end. The walls of the San Juan he describes as being as high as
those of the Colorado, which he has just been talking about, that is,
five thousand feet, yet for these seventy-five miles he would have
actually been passing between walls of about one thousand feet. He says
he could not escape here because the waters of the San Juan were so
violent they filled its canyon from bank to bank. In reality, he could
have made his way out of the canyon (Glen Canyon) in a great many places
in the long distance between the foot of Narrow Canyon and the San Juan.
There is nothing difficult about it. But not knowing this, and nobody
else knowing it at that time, the yarn went very well. Also, below the
San Juan, as far as Lee's Ferry, there are numerous opportunities to
leave the canyon; and there, are a great many attractive bottoms all the
way through sunny Glen Canyon, where landings could have been made in a
bona fide journey, and birds snared; anything rather than to go drifting
along day after day toward dangers unknown. "At every bend of the river
it seemed as if they were descending deeper into the earth, and that the
walls were coming closer together above them, shutting out the narrow
belt of sky, thickening the black shadows, and redoubling the echoes
that went up from the foaming waters," all of which is nonsense. They
were not yet, even taking their own, or rather his own, calculations,
near the Grand Canyon, and the whole one hundred and forty-nine miles of
Glen Canyon are simply charming; altogether delightful. One can paddle
along in any sort of craft, can leave the river in many places, and in
general enjoy himself. I have been over the stretch twice, once at low
water and again at high, so I speak from abundant experience. Naively
he remarks, "as yet they had seen no natural bridge spanning the chasm
above them, nor had fall or cataract prevented their safe advance!" Yet
they are supposed to have passed through the forty-one miles of Cataract
Canyon's turmoil, which I venture to say no man could ever forget. They
had been only four days getting to a point below the San Juan, simply
drifting; that is about two hundred miles, or some fifty miles a
daylight day. Around three o'clock on the fourth day they heard the deep
roar as of a waterfall in front of them.

* Parry's first reco