as not his fault. We all felt that short rations were so much
ahead of nothing that there was no grumbling. The volume of water was
now nearly double what it had been on the Green, and the force of the
rapids was greatly augmented. Huge boulders on the bottom, which the
Green would have turned over only once or twice, here were rolled along,
when they started, for many yards sensible to not the eye but to the
ear. This was a distinct feature of Cataract Canyon and shows the
declivity to be very great and the boulders to be well worn. The
declivity for a few miles is greater than in Lodore, perhaps the
greatest on the river. Sometimes in Cataract the rumble of these
boulders was mistaken for distant thunder. At one rapid I remember that
a rock many feet square was swaying from the current. After dinner, the
boats were lowered over the rapid, fall, cataract, or whatever it might
be called, before which we had paused, and then in short order over four
more tremendous ones. When we had run a fifth, in which we received a
violent shaking-up, we went into camp on the left bank at the head of
another roarer, or pair of them, and hastened to throw off our saturated
clothes and put on the dry from out the friendly rubber sacks. I never
before understood the comfort of being dry. The topographers recorded a
good day's work: nine miles and eight powerful cataracts. Cataract, we
decided was the proper name for these plunges, for though they were by
no means vertical, they were more violent than what is ordinarily called
a rapid. This was one part of the canyons where White, in his imaginary
journey, found an easy passage! The next day Powell took me with him
on a climb to the top. We had little trouble in getting out. On the
way back the Major's cut-off arm was on the rock side of a gulch we
had followed up, and I found it necessary, two or three times, to place
myself where he could step on my knee, as his stump had a tendency to
throw him off his balance. Had he fallen at these points the drop would
have been four hundred or five hundred feet. I mention this to show how
he never permitted his one-armed condition to interfere with his doing
things. The walls here were eighteen hundred feet, a gain of three
hundred feet over the Junction. While we were away the men below had
lowered the boats over two rapids, in one of which the Nell broke loose
and went down alone with her cargo on board. As good fortune will have
it, there is frequ