we deigned a survey of these great
wonders of nature. On our walk down the creek to the river, struck with
the beauty of its cascades, we even neglected the greater, to admire the
lesser wonders. Bushing with great celerity through a deep defile of
lava and obsidian, worn into caverns and fissures, the stream,
one-fourth of a mile from its debouchure, breaks into a continuous
cascade of remarkable beauty, consisting of a fall of five feet,
succeeded by another of fifteen into a grotto formed by proximate rocks
imperfectly arching it, whence from a crystal pool of unfathomable depth
at their base, it lingers as if half reluctant to continue its course,
or as if to renew its power, and then glides gracefully over a
descending, almost perpendicular, ledge, veiling the rocks for the
distance of eighty feet. Mr. Hedges gave to this succession of cascades
the name "Crystal fall." It is very beautiful; but the broken and
cavernous gorge through which it passes, worn into a thousand fantastic
shapes, bearing along its margin the tracks of grizzly bears and lesser
wild animals, scattered throughout with huge masses of obsidian and
other volcanic matter--the whole suggestive of nothing earthly nor
heavenly--received at our hands, and not inaptly as I conceive, the name
of "The Devil's Den."

I presume that many persons will question the taste evinced by our
company in the selection of names for the various objects of interest we
have thus far met with; but they are all so different from any of
Nature's works that we have ever seen or heard of, so entirely out of
range of human experience, and withal so full of exhibitions which can
suggest no other fancy than that which our good grandmothers have
painted on our boyish imaginations as a destined future abode, that we
are likely, almost involuntarily, to pursue the system with which we
have commenced, to the end of our journey. A similar imagination has
possessed travelers and visitors to other volcanic regions.

We have decided to remain at this point through the entire day
to-morrow, and examine the canon and falls. From the brief survey of the
canon I was enabled to make before darkness set in, I am impressed with
its awful grandeur, and I realize the impossibility of giving to any one
who has not seen a gorge similar in character, any idea of it.

[Illustration: Cornelius Hedges.]

It is getting late, and it is already past our usual bedtime, and Jake
Smith is calling to me