tations are grotesque and horrible, but wonderfully
carved, and the variety of the figures is marvellous."

"Hadn't we better row close in?" said Briscoe, who seemed impatient, and
the men took to their oars till the strong rock wall was reached and the
boat drawn along by one of the men with a boat-hook from end to end and
back, without a sign of any way up being found.

There they were in the deep water, which glided along at the foot of a
blank, carefully smoothed-away wall of rock, perfectly perpendicular,
and, save where it was dotted here and there with mossy growth, offering
not the slightest foot- or hand-hold.

"Why, it must be fully fifty feet high to that carved coping-like
projection," said Brace.

"Yes, about that," said Briscoe, with a sigh of disappointment. "Here,
I'd give a hundred dollars for the loan of a ladder that we could plant
down here in the water and would reach to the top."

"It would take a long one," said Brace, laughing. "I wonder how deep it
is."

"Ah, let's try," said Briscoe. "Here, hand one of those fishing-lines
and a lead out of the locker, Lynton."

This was well within the second mate's province, and the next minute he
had the heaviest lead at the end of a line, dropped it over the side,
and let it run down as fast as he could unwind.

"I say: it's deep," he said, as the line ran over the boat's gunwale;
and he said so again and again, till the winder was empty and the lead
not yet at the bottom.

"How long is that line?" said Brace, in astonishment.

"One hundred yards, gentlemen," said Lynton loudly. "Shall I have it
wound up again?"

"Yes," said Sir Humphrey. "We must try and find bottom some other time.
The river must be of a terrific depth."

"That's so," said Briscoe. "You see, we're in a tremendous canon, and
the bottom is filled up by this river, which seems as if it would hold
any amount of flood-water. I'll be bound to say it's full of fish, and
that accounts for the Indians coming here with their nets and lines."

"What's to be done now?" said Brace.

"We must try the other end of the place, and see if we can't get into
the temple from there," said Briscoe, who had taken out his knife to
begin scraping the slime and moss from the face of the rocky wall till
he had made a clean patch, which he examined with a pocket magnifier.

"There's time to do a bit more to-day," said Lynton, who was eager to go
on exploring, and in obedience to an order the m