n widens, "the marble benches retreat, new
strata of limestone, quartzite, and sandstone come up from the river,"
writes Stanton, "and the debris forms a talus equal to a mountain slope.
Here the bottoms widen into little farms covered with green grass and
groves of mesquite, making a most charming summer picture, in strong
contrast with the dismal narrow canyons above." They then passed the
Little Colorado and entered the Grand Canyon proper, meeting with a lone
prospector in the wide portion just below the Little Colorado, the only
person they had seen in any of the canyons traversed.

Arriving at the First Granite Gorge (Archaean formation), they were
at the beginning of the wildest stretch of river of all, perhaps the
wildest to be found anywhere, the fall in the first ten miles averaging
twenty-one feet to the mile, the greatest average except in Lodore and
a portion of Cataract, and as this descent is not spread over the ten
miles, but occurs in a series of falls with comparatively calm water
between, it is not hard to picture the conditions. Stanton also
pronounces these rapids of the First Granite Gorge the most powerful he
saw, except two in the Second Granite Gorge. On January 29th they had
cautiously advanced till they were before the great descent some of our
party had called the Sockdologer, the heaviest fall on the river, about
eighty feet in a third of a mile. They proceeded all along in much the
same careful fashion as we had done, and as everyone who hopes to make
this passage alive must proceed. The water being low, they were able
to let their boats by line over the upper end of the Sockdologer with
safety, but, in attempting to continue, the Marie was caught by a
cross-current and thrown against the rocks, turned half over, filled
with water, and jammed tightly between two boulders lying just beneath
the surface. In winter, the air in the canyon is not very cold, but the
river coming so swiftly from the far north is, and the men with lines
about their waists who tried to go through the rushing waist-deep water
found it icy. Taking turns, they succeeded with a grappling-hook in
getting out the cargo, losing only two sacks of provisions, but though
they laboured till dark they were not able to move the boat. Giving her
up for lost, they tried to secure a night's rest on the sharp rocks. Had
a great rise in the river occurred now the party would have been in a
terrible predicament, but though it rose a fe