ful in their habits. Instead of keeping to their duties in a
methodical way, they rush their annual work through in a month or two;
then they take long vacations. For months together they carry no water
at all; and one may plant and build and live and sleep in their deserted
beds--but beware! Without warning, they resume active business. Maybe
on a Sunday, or in the middle of the night, a storm-cloud visits the
mountains. There is a roar, a tearing, a crashing, and down comes a
terrible wall of water, sweeping away houses and barns and people. No
fishing, no boating, no swimming, no skating on those treacherous
rivers; only surprise and shock and disaster!

So different that they seem to belong in a different world are the great
inter-mountain streams, like the Yellowstone and the Colorado.

They flow through landscapes of desolate grandeur, vast expanses
compassed by endless mountain-ranges that chill the bright skies with
never-melting snows. The countless peaks look down on the clouds, while
far below the clouds wind valleys that the sunlight never reaches.
Twisting in gloomy dusk through these valleys, a gaping canon yawns.
Peering fearfully into its black, forbidding depths, an echo reaches the
ear. It is the fury of a mighty river, so far below that only a sullen
roar rises to the light of day. With frightful velocity it rushes
through a channel cut during centuries of patience deep into the
stubborn rock. Now mad with whirlpools, now silently awful with
stretches of green water, that wait to lure the boatman to death, the
mighty river rushes darkly through the Grand Colorado Canon.

No sport, no fun, no frolic there. Here are only awe-inspiring gloom and
grandeur, and dangers so hideous that only a handful of men have ever
braved them--fewer still survived.

Grandest of American rivers though it is, you will be glad to get away
from it to a noble stream like the Columbia, to a headstrong flood like
the Missouri, or an inland sea like the Mississippi; on them at least
you can draw a full breath and speak aloud without a feeling that the
silent mountains may fall on you or the raging river swallow you up.

In the vast territory lying between the Missouri River and the Pacific
Ocean the rivers are fast being harnessed for a work that will one day
make the most barren spots fertile. Irrigation is claiming every year
more of the flow of Western rivers. Even the tricksy old Missouri is
contributing somewhat to irri