e marvelled as children
marvel.

"This evening we shall do the grand canyon of the Yellowstone?" said the
maiden.

"Together?" said I; and she said yes.

The sun was sinking when we heard the roar of falling waters and came to
a broad river along whose banks we ran. And then--oh, then! I might at a
pinch describe the infernal regions, but not the other place. Be it
known to you that the Yellowstone River has occasion to run through a
gorge about eight miles long. To get to the bottom of the gorge it makes
two leaps, one of about one hundred and twenty and the other of three
hundred feet. I investigated the upper or lesser fall, which is close to
the hotel. Up to that time nothing particular happens to the
Yellowstone, its banks being only rocky, rather steep, and plentifully
adorned with pines. At the falls it comes round a corner, green, solid,
ribbed with a little foam and not more than thirty yards wide. Then it
goes over still green and rather more solid than before. After a minute
or two you, sitting upon a rock directly above the drop, begin to
understand that something has occurred; that the river has jumped a huge
distance between solid cliff walls and what looks like the gentle froth
of ripples lapping the sides of the gorge below is really the outcome of
great waves. And the river yells aloud; but the cliffs do not allow the
yells to escape.

That inspection began with curiosity and finished in terror, for it
seemed that the whole world was sliding in chrysolite from under my
feet. I followed with the others round the corner to arrive at the brink
of the canyon: we had to climb up a nearly perpendicular ascent to begin
with, for the ground rises more than the river drops. Stately pine woods
fringe either lip of the gorge, which is--the Gorge of the Yellowstone.

All I can say is that without warning or preparation I looked into a
gulf seventeen hundred feet deep with eagles and fish-hawks circling far
below. And the sides of that gulf were one wild welter of
colour--crimson, emerald, cobalt, ochre, amber, honey splashed with
port-wine, snow-white, vermilion, lemon, and silver-grey, in wide
washes. The sides did not fall sheer, but were graven by time and water
and air into monstrous heads of kings, dead chiefs, men and women of the
old time. So far below that no sound of its strife could reach us, the
Yellowstone River ran--a finger-wide strip of jade-green. The sunlight
took those wondrous walls and gav