again, and row to the cliff, and
wait until Sumner and Powell can come. After a difficult climb they
reach us. We run two or three miles farther, and turn again to the
northwest, continuing until night, when we have run out of the granite
once more.

_August 29._ We start very early this morning. The river still
continues swift, but we have no serious difficulty, and at twelve
o'clock emerge from the Grand Canon of the Colorado.

We are in a valley now, and low mountains are seen in the distance,
coming to the river below. We recognize this as the Grand Wash.

A few years ago a party of Mormons set out from St. George, Utah, taking
with them a boat, and came down to the mouth of the Grand Wash, where
they divided, a portion of the party crossing the river to explore the
San Francisco Mountains. Three men--Hamblin, Miller, and Crosby--taking
the boat, went on down the river to Callville, landing a few miles below
the mouth of the Rio Virgen. We have their manuscript journal with us,
and so the stream is comparatively well known.

To-night we camp on the left bank in a mesquit thicket.

The relief from danger and the joy of success are great. When he who has
been chained by wounds to a hospital cot, until his canvas tent seems
like a dungeon cell, until the groans of those who lie about, tortured
with probe and knife, are piled up, a weight of horror on his ears that
he cannot throw off, cannot forget, and until the stench of festering
wounds and anaesthetic drugs has filled the air with its loathsome
burthen, at last goes into the open field, what a world he sees! How
beautiful the sky; how bright the sunshine; what "floods of delirious
music" pour from the throats of birds; how sweet the fragrance of earth
and tree, and blossom! The first hour of convalescent freedom seems rich
recompense for all--pain, gloom, terror.

Something like this are the feelings we experience to-night. Ever before
us has been an unknown danger, heavier than immediate peril. Every
waking hour passed in the Grand Canon has been one of toil. We have
watched with deep solicitude the steady disappearance of our scant
supply of rations, and from time to time have seen the river snatch a
portion of the little left, while we were ahungered. And danger and toil
were endured in those gloomy depths, where ofttimes the clouds hid the
sky by day, and but a narrow zone of stars could be seen at night. Only
during the few hours of deep sleep, consequen