elled him into the unknown; a supernatural portal had opened
to give him passage; then it had closed behind him forever.

The canon, with all its two hundred and forty miles of marvels and perils,
presented itself to his imagination as a unity. The first step within it
placed him under an enchantment from which there was no escape until the
whole circuit of the spell should be completed. He was like Orlando in the
magic garden, when the gate vanished immediately upon his entrance,
leaving him no choice but to press on from trial to trial. He was no more
free to pause or turn back than Grecian ghosts sailing down Acheron toward
the throne of Radamanthus.

Direct statement, and even the higher speech of simile, fail to describe
the Great Canon and the emotion which it produces. Were its fronting
precipices organs, with their mountainous columns and pilasters for
organ-pipes, they might produce a _de profundis_ worthy of the scene and
of its sentiments, its inspiration. This is not bombast; so far from
exaggerating it does not even attain to the subject; no words can so much
as outline the effects of eighty leagues of mountain sculptured by a great
river.

Let us venture one comparison. Imagine a groove a foot broad and twenty
feet deep, with a runnel of water trickling at the bottom of it and a
fleck of dust floating down the rivulet. Now increase the dimensions until
the groove is two hundred and fifty feet in breadth by five thousand feet
in depth, and the speck a boat with three voyagers. You have the Great
Canon of the Colorado and Thurstane and his comrades seeking its issue.

"Do you call this a counthry?" asked Sweeny, after an awe-stricken
silence. "I'm thinkin' we're gittin' outside av the worrld like."

"An' I'm thinkin' we're gittin' too fur inside on't," muttered Glover.
"Look's 's though we might slip clean under afore long. Most low-spirited
hole I ever rolled into. 'Minds me 'f that last ditch people talk of dyin'
in. Must say I'd rather be in the trough 'f the sea."

"An' what kind av a trough is that?" inquired Sweeny, inquisitive even in
his dumps.

"It's the trough where they feed the niggers out to the sharks."

"Faix, an' I'd loike to see it at feedin' time," answered Sweeny with a
feeble chuckle.

Nature as it is is one image; nature as it appears is a thousand; or
rather it is infinite. Every soul is a mirror, reflecting what faces it;
but the reflections differ as do the souls that give th