A POULTRY HOUSE OF SICHUMOVI RESEMBLING AN OVEN.
They have concluded to send out a young man after the Shi'vwits. The runner fixes his moccasins, puts some food in a sack and water in a little wickerwork jug, straps them on his back, and starts at a good round pace.
We have concluded to go down the canyon, hoping to meet the Shi'vwits on our return. Soon we are ready to start, leaving the camp and pack animals in charge of the two Indians who came with us. As we move out our new guide comes up, a blear-eyed, weazen-faced, quiet old man, with his bow and arrows in one hand and a small cane in the other. These Indians all carry canes with a crooked handle, they say to kill rattlesnakes and to pull rabbits from their holes. The valley is high up in the mountain and we descend from it by a rocky, precipitous trail, down, down, down for two long, weary hours, leading our ponies and stumbling over the rocks. At last we are at the foot of the mountain, standing on a little knoll, from which we can look into a canyon below.
THE RIO VIRGEN AND THE UINKARET MOUNTAINS.
Into this we descend, and then we follow it for miles, clambering down and still down. Often we cross beds of lava, that have been poured into the canyon by lateral channels, and these angular fragments of basalt make the way very rough for the animals.
About two o'clock the guide halts us with his wand, and, springing over the rocks, he is lost in a gulch. In a few minutes he returns, and tells us there is a little water below in a pocket. It is vile and our ponies refuse to drink it. We pass on, still descending. A mile or two from the water basin we come to a precipice more than 1,000 feet to the bottom. There is a canyon running at a greater depth and at right angles to this, into which this enters by the precipice; and this second canyon is a lateral one to the greater one, in the bottom of which we are to find the river. Searching about, we find a way by which we can descend along the shelves and steps and piles of broken rocks.
We start, leading our ponies; a wall upon our left; unknown depths on our right. At places our way is along shelves so narrow or so sloping that I ache with fear lest a pony should make a misstep and knock a man over the cliffs with him. Now and then we start the loose rocks under our feet, and over the cliffs they go, thundering down, down, the echoes rolling through distant canyons. At last we pass along a level shelf for some distance, then we turn to the right and zigzag down a steep slope to the bottom. Now we pass along this lower canyon for two or three miles, to where it terminates in the Grand Canyon, as the other ended in this, only the river is 1,800 feet below us, and it seems at this distance to be but a creek. Our withered guide, the human pickle, seats himself on a rock and seems wonderfully amused at our discomfiture, for we can see no way by which to descend to the river. After some minutes he quietly rises and, beckoning us to follow, points out a narrow sloping shelf on the right, and this is to be our way. It leads along the cliff for half a mile to a wider bench beyond, which, he says, is broken down on the other side in a great slide, and there we can get to the river. So we start out on the shelf; it is so steep we can hardly stand on it, and to fall or slip is to go--don't look to see!
It is soon manifest that we cannot get the ponies along the ledge. The storms have washed it down since our guide was here last, years ago. One of the ponies has gone so far that we cannot turn him back until we