le a glorious full
moon had risen, spreading a soft, weird light over the canyon walls
and the river; so that we now had a light much better than the dusk of
half an hour previous, our course being almost due south. Finally,
becoming discouraged, we decided to pull for the San Juan River,
feeling sure that we would find a sand-bar there. It was late when we
reached it, and instead of a sand-bar we found a delta of bottomless
mud. We had drifted past the point where the rivers joined, before
noticing that the stream turned directly to the west, with canyon
walls two or three hundred feet high, and no moonlight entered there.
Instead, it was black as a dungeon. From down in that darkness there
came a muffled roar, reverberating against the walls, and sounding
decidedly like a rapid. There was not a minute to lose. We pulled, and
pulled hard--for the stream was now quite swift close to the right
shore, and a sheer bank of earth about ten feet high made it difficult
to land. Jumping into the mud at the edge of the water, we tied the
boats to some bushes, then tore down the bank and climbed out on a
dry, sandy point of land. At the end or sharp turn of the sheer wall
we found a fair camp, with driftwood enough for that night. Emery,
weak from his former illness and the long day's run, went to bed as
soon as we had eaten a light supper. I looked after the cooking that
evening, making some baking-powder bread,--otherwise known as a
flapjack,--along with other arrangements for the next day; but I fear
my efforts as a cook always resulted rather poorly.

We had breakfast at an early hour the next morning and were ready for
the boats at 7.15, the earliest start to our record. Our rapid of the
night before proved to be a false alarm, being nothing more than the
breaking of swift water as it swept the banks of rocks at the turn. It
was quite different from what we had pictured in our minds.

We had long looked forward to this day. Navajo Mountain, with bare,
jagged sides and tree-covered dome, was located just a few miles below
this camp. It was a sandstone mountain peak, towering 7000 feet above
the river, the steep slope beginning some five or six miles back from
the stream. The base on which it rested was of sandstone, rounded and
gullied into curious forms, a warm red and orange colour
predominating. The north side, facing the river, was steep of slope,
covered with the fragments of crumbled cliffs and with soft
cream-tinted