d walked on foot two
hundred yards. Then we looked down.

It was nearly four thousand feet down. Do you realize how far that is?
There was a river meandering through olive-colored forests. It was so
distant that it was light green and as narrow as a piece of tape. Here
and there were rapids, but so remote that we could not distinguish the
motion of them, only the color. The white resembled tiny dabs of
cotton wool stuck on the tape. It turned and twisted, following the
turns and twists of the canon. Somehow the level at the bottom
resembled less forests and meadows than a heavy and sluggish fluid like
molasses flowing between the canon walls. It emerged from the bend of
a sheer cliff ten miles to eastward: it disappeared placidly around the
bend of another sheer cliff an equal distance to the westward.

The time was afternoon. As we watched, the shadow of the canon wall
darkened the valley. Whereupon we looked up.

Now the upper air, of which we were dwellers for the moment, was
peopled by giants and clear atmosphere and glittering sunlight,
flashing like silver and steel and precious stones from the granite
domes, peaks, minarets, and palisades of the High Sierras. Solid as
they were in reality, in the crispness of this mountain air, under the
tangible blue of this mountain sky, they seemed to poise light as so
many balloons. Some of them rose sheer, with hardly a fissure; some
had flung across their shoulders long trailing pine draperies, fine as
fur; others matched mantles of the whitest white against the bluest
blue of the sky. Towards the lower country were more pines rising in
ridges, like the fur of an animal that has been alarmed.

We dangled our feet over the edge and talked about it. Wes pointed to
the upper end where the sluggish lava-like flow of the canon-bed first
came into view.

"That's where we'll camp," said he.

"When?" we asked.

"When we get there," he answered.

For this canon lies in the heart of the mountains. Those who would
visit it have first to get into the country--a matter of over a week.
Then they have their choice of three probabilities of destruction.

The first route comprehends two final days of travel at an altitude of
about ten thousand feet, where the snow lies in midsummer; where there
is no feed, no comfort, and the way is strewn with the bones of horses.
This is known as the "Basin Trail." After taking it, you prefer the
others--until you try them.

The fi