, acquainted
with all the springs and passes and broken-down jumpable places in
the sheer ribbon cliffs, bounding from crag to crag in easy grace and
confidence of strength, his great horns held high above his shoulders,
wild red blood beating and hissing through every fiber of him like the
wind through a quivering mountain pine.

Deer also are occasionally met in the canyon, making their way to the
river when the wells of the plateau are dry. Along the short spring
streams beavers are still busy, as is shown by the cottonwood and willow
timber they have cut and peeled, found in all the river drift-heaps.
In the most barren cliffs and gulches there dwell a multitude of lesser
animals, well-dressed, clear-eyed, happy little beasts--wood rats,
kangaroo rats, gophers, wood mice, skunks, rabbits, bobcats, and many
others, gathering food, or dozing in their sun-warmed dens. Lizards,
too, of every kind and color are here enjoying life on the hot cliffs,
and making the brightest of them brighter.

Nor is there any lack of feathered people. The golden eagle may be seen,
and the osprey, hawks, jays, hummingbirds, the mourning dove, and cheery
familiar singers--the black-headed grosbeak, robin, bluebird, Townsend's
thrush, and many warblers, sailing the sky and enlivening the rocks and
bushes through all the canyon wilderness.

Here at Hance's river camp or a few miles above it brave Powell and
his brave men passed their first night in the canyon on the adventurous
voyage of discovery thirty-three [34] years ago. They faced a thousand
dangers, open or hidden, now in their boats gladly sliding down swift,
smooth reaches, now rolled over and over in back-combing surges of
rough, roaring cataracts, sucked under in eddies, swimming like beavers,
tossed and beaten like castaway drift--stout-hearted, undaunted, doing
their work through it all. After a month of this they floated smoothly
out of the dark, gloomy, roaring abyss into light and safety two hundred
miles below. As the flood rushes past us, heavy-laden with desert
mud, we naturally think of its sources, its countless silvery branches
outspread on thousands of snowy mountains along the crest of the
continent, and the life of them, the beauty of them, their history
and romance. Its topmost springs are far north and east in Wyoming and
Colorado, on the snowy Wind River, Front, Park, and Sawatch Ranges,
dividing the two ocean waters, and the Elk, Wahsatch, Uinta, and
innumerabl