wave fills the open
compartment; she is water-logged, and drifts unmanageable. Breaker after
breaker roll over her, and one capsizes her. The men are thrown out; but
they cling to the boat, and she drifts down some distance, alongside of
us, and we are able to catch her. She is soon bailed out, and the men
are aboard once more; but the oars are lost, so a pair from the _Emma
Dean_ is spared. Then for two miles we find smooth water.

Clouds are playing in the canon to-day. Sometimes they roll down in
great masses, filling the gorge with gloom; sometimes they hang above,
from wall to wall, and cover the canon with a roof of impending storm;
and we can peer long distances up and down this canon corridor, with its
cloud roof overhead, its walls of black granite, and its river bright
with the sheen of broken waters. Then, a gust of wind sweeps down a side
gulch, and, making a rift in the clouds, reveals the blue heavens, and a
stream of sunlight pours in. Then, the clouds drift away into the
distance, and hang around crags, and peaks, and pinnacles, and towers,
and walls, and cover them with a mantle that lifts from time to time,
and sets them all in sharp relief. Then, baby clouds creep out of side
canons, glide around points, and creep back again into more distant
gorges. Then, clouds, set in strata across the canon, with intervening
vista views, to cliffs and rocks beyond. The clouds are children of the
heavens, and when they play among the rocks they lift them to the region
above.

It rains! Rapidly little rills are formed above, and these soon grow
into brooks, and the brooks grow into creeks, and tumble over the walls
in innumerable cascades, adding their wild music to the roar of the
river. When the rain ceases, the rills, brooks, and creeks run dry. The
waters that fall during a rain on these steep rocks are gathered at once
into the river; they could scarcely be poured in more suddenly if some
vast spout ran from the clouds to the stream itself. When a storm bursts
over the canon a side gulch is dangerous, for a sudden flood may come,
and the inpouring water will raise the river, so as to hide the rocks
before your eyes.

Early in the afternoon we discover a stream, entering from the north, a
clear, beautiful creek, coming down through a gorgeous red canon. We
land, and camp on a sand beach, above its mouth, under a great,
overspreading tree, with willow-shaped leaves.

_August 16._ We must dry our rations agai