are able to pull her into a cove in the left wall, where she is made fast. But this leaves a man on the rock above, holding to the line of the little boat. When all is ready, he springs from the rock, clinging to the line with one hand and swimming with the other, and we pull him in as he goes by. As the two boats, thus loosened, drift down, the men
LIGHTHOUSE ROCK, CANYON OF DESOLATION.
in the cove pull us all in as we come opposite; then we pass around to a point of rock below the cove, close to the wall, land, make a short portage over the worst places in the rapid, and start again.
At night we camp on a sand beach. The wind blows a hurricane; the drifting sand almost blinds us; and nowhere can we find shelter. The wind continues to blow all night, the sand sifting through our blankets
and piling over us until we are covered as in a snowdrift. We are glad when morning comes.
July 13.--This morning we have an exhilarating ride. The river is swift, and there are many smooth rapids. I stand on deck, keeping careful watch ahead, and we glide along, mile after mile, plying strokes, now on the right and then on the left, just sufficient to guide our boats past the rocks into smooth water. At noon we emerge from Gray Canyon, as we have named it, and camp for dinner under a cotton-wood tree standing on the left bank.
Extensive sand plains extend back from the immediate river valley as far as we can see on either side. These naked, drifting sands gleam brilliantly in the midday sun of July. The reflected heat from the glaring surface produces a curious motion of the atmosphere; little currents are generated and the whole seems to be trembling and moving about in many directions, or, failing to see that the movement is in the atmosphere, it gives the impression of an unstable land. Plains and hills and cliffs and distant mountains seem to be floating vaguely about in a trembling, wave-rocked sea, and patches of landscape seem to float away and be lost, and then to reappear.