ind can be run, until we have made another five miles, when we land
for dinner.

Then we let down with lines over a long rapid and start again. Once more
the walls close in, and we find ourselves in a narrow gorge, the water
again filling the channel and being very swift. With great care and
constant watchfulness we proceed, making about four miles this
afternoon, and camp in a cave.

_August 14-_--At daybreak we walk down the bank of the river, on a
little sandy beach, to take a view of a new feature in the canyon.
Heretofore hard rocks have given us bad river; soft rocks, smooth water;
and a series of rocks harder than any we have experienced sets in. The
river enters the gneiss! We can see but a little way into the granite
gorge, but it looks threatening.

After breakfast we enter on the waves. At the very introduction it
inspires awe. The canyon is narrower than we have ever before seen it;
the water is swifter; there are but few broken rocks in the channel; but
the walls are set, on either side, with pinnacles and crags; and sharp,
angular buttresses, bristling with wind- and wave-polished spires,
extend far out into the river.

Ledges of rock jut into the stream, their tops sometimes just below the
surface, sometimes rising a few or many feet above; and island ledges
and island pinnacles and island towers break the swift course of the
stream into chutes and eddies and whirlpools. We soon reach a place
where a creek comes in from the left, and, just below, the channel is
choked with boulders, which have washed down this lateral canyon and
formed a dam, over which there is a fall of 30 or 40 feet; but on the
boulders foothold can be had, and we make a portage. Three more such
dams are found. Over one we make a portage; at the other two are chutes
through which we can run.

As we proceed the granite rises higher, until nearly a thousand feet of
the lower part of the walls are composed of this rock.

About eleven o'clock we hear a great roar ahead, and approach it very
cautiously. The sound grows louder and louder as we run, and at last we
find ourselves above a long, broken fall, with ledges and pinnacles of
rock obstructing the river. There is a descent of perhaps 75 or 80 feet
in a third of a mile, and the rushing waters break into great waves
on the rocks, and lash themselves into a mad, white foam. We can land
just above, but there is no foothold on either side by which we can make
a portage. It is nearly