e us. The burro, on
our previous visit, was almost shoved off that cliff when the pack
caught on a rock, and was only saved by strenuous pulling on the
neck-rope and pack harness. Soon we passed some tunnels on both sides
of the river where the Mormon miners had tapped a copper ledge. At
4.15 P.M. we were at the end of the Tanner Trail, the outlet of the
Little Colorado Trail to the rim above. It had taken seven hours of
toil to cover the same ground we now sped over in an hour and a
quarter. Major Powell, in 1872, found here the remnant of a very small
hut built of mesquite logs, but whether the remains of an Indian's or
white man's shelter cannot be stated. The trail, without doubt was
used by the Indians before the white man invaded this region.

The canyon had changed again from one which was very narrow to one
much more complex, greater, and grander. The walls on top were many
miles apart; Comanche Point, to our left, was over 4000 feet above us;
Desert View, Moran Point, and other points on the south rim were even
higher. On the right we could see an arch near Cape Final on Greenland
Point, over 5000 feet up, that we had photographed, from the top, a
few years before. Pagoda-shaped temples--the formation so typical of
the Grand Canyon--clustered on all sides. The upper walls were similar
in tint to those in Marble Canyon, but here at the river was a new
formation; the algonkian, composed of thousands of brilliantly
coloured bands of rock, standing at an angle--the one irregularity to
the uniform layers of rock--a remnant of thousands of feet of rock
which once covered this region, then was planed away before the other
deposits were placed. All about us, close to the river, was a deep,
soft sand formed by the disintegration of the rocks above, as
brilliantly coloured as the rocks from which they came. What had been
a very narrow stream above here spread out over a thousand feet wide,
ran with a good current, and seemed to be anything but a shallow
stream at that.

We had travelled far that day but still sped on,--with a few rapids
which did not retard, but rather helped us on our way, and with a good
current between these rapids,--only stopping to camp when a
three-hundred foot wall rose sheer from the river's edge, bringing to
an end our basin-like river bottom, where one could walk out on either
side. It was not necessary to hunt for driftwood this evening, for a
thicket of mesquite--the best of all wood for a