The Beaver, seeing his eagerness, smiled and nodded, and thrusting the bushes aside, he entered the patch of dense forest, which was apparently about half a mile in length, running with a breadth of half that distance along the edge of the canyon.
The interpreter followed, and after a few minutes they returned to say that no progress could be made in that direction, so they re-entered the forest some fifty yards lower, and where it looked less promising than before.
The chief, however, seemed to be satisfied, and drawing his knife, he hacked and chopped at the projecting vines and thorns so as to clear a way for those who followed; till after winding in and out for some time, he came at length to what seemed little more than a crack in the ground about a yard wide, and pretty well choked up with various kinds of growth.
At the first glance it seemed impossible for any one to descend into this rift, but the interpreter showed them that it was possible by leaping down, and directly after there was a loud, rattling noise, and an extremely large rattlesnake glided out of the rift on to the level ground. It was making its escape, when a sharp blow from the chief’s knife divided it nearly in two, and he finished his task by crushing its head with the butt of his rifle.
“We must be on the look-out, Bart,” said the Doctor, “if these reptiles are in any quantity;” and as the Beaver leaped down he followed, then came Bart, and Joses closed up the rear.
“I shall get all the sarpents,” he grumbled. “You people will disturb them all, and they’ll do their stinging upon me.”
Then the descent became so toilsome that conversation ceased, and nothing was heard but the crackling of twigs, the breaking off of branches, and the sharp, rustling noise that followed as the travellers forced their way through the bushes.
This lasted for about fifty yards, and then the descent became very rapid, and the trees larger and less crowded together. The rift widened, too, at times, but only to contract again; and then its sides so nearly approached that their path became terribly obscure, and without so energetic a guide as they possessed it would have required a stout-hearted man to proceed.
Every here and there they had to slide down the rock perhaps forty or fifty feet; then there would be a careful picking of the way over some rugged stones, and then another slide down for a while.
Once or twice it seemed as if they had come to a full stop, the rift being closed up by fallen masses of earth and stones; but the Beaver mounted these boldly, as if he knew of their existence, and lowered himself gently down the other side, waiting to help the Doctor, for Bart laughingly declined, preferring as he did to leap from stone to stone, and swing himself over cracks that seemed almost impassable.