I brought one piece of news to the hut: it was that although the river was free from ice opposite our resting-place, and to the end of the reach in view, yet it was fast closed in for the twenty or thirty miles which my mountain climb had enabled me to scan. So here in the midst of the mountains we awaited the disruption of the ice and the opening of our watery way.
The delay thus occasioned was unexpected, and fell heavily on my supply of food; but rabbits and partridges were numerous, and Kalder’s gun proved itself to be a worthy weapon at these denizens of the forest, as well as at the beaver. On the evening of my arrival at the hut I had seen two moose drinking on a sand-bar near the mouth of the Cañon, but the river lay between me and them, and we could find no further trace of them on the following day.
In one respect the delay was not irksome to me; it gave me an opportunity of exploring a portion of the Great Cañon, and forming some idea of the nature of the difficulties and dangers which made it an impassable chasm for the hardiest voyageurs.
On the 29th of April the ice in the upper part of the river broke up, and came pouring down with great violence for some hours; blocks of ice many feet in thickness, and weighing several tons, came down the broad river, crushing against each other, and lining the shore with huge crystal masses.
The river rose rapidly, and long after dark the grating of the ice-blocks in the broad channel below told us that the break-up must be a general one; the current before our hut was running six miles an hour, and the ice had begun to run early in the afternoon.
All next day the ice continued to run at intervals, but towards evening it grew less, and at nightfall it had nearly ceased.
During the day I set out to explore the Cañon. Making my way along the edge of what was, in ages past, the shore of a vast lake, I gained the summit of a ridge which hung directly over the Cañon. Through a mass of wrack and tangled forest I held on, guided by the dull roar of waters until I reached an open space, where a ledge of rock dipped suddenly into the abyss: on the outer edge of this rock a few spruce-trees sprung from cleft and fissure, and from beneath, deep down in the dark chasm, a roar of water floated up into the day above. Advancing cautiously to the smooth edge of the chasm, I took hold of a spruce-tree and looked over. Below lay one of those grim glimpses which the earth holds hidden, save from the eagle and the mid-day sun. Caught in a dark prison of stupendous cliffs (cliffs which hollowed out beneath, so that the topmost ledge literally hung over the boiling abyss of waters), the river foamed and lashed against rock and precipice, nine hundred feet below me. Like some caged beast that finds escape impossible on one side, it flew as madly and as vainly against the other; and then fell back in foam and roar and raging whirlpool. The rocks at the base held the record of its wrath in great trunks of trees, and blocks of ice lying piled and smashed in shapeless ruin.
Looking down the Cañon towards the south, a great glen opened from the west; and the sun, now getting low in the heavens, poured through this valley a flood of light on red and grey walls of rugged rock; while half the pine-clad hills lay dark in shade, and half glowed golden in this level light; and far away, beyond the shadowy chasm and the sun-lit glen, one great mountain-peak lifted his dazzling crest of snow high into the blue air of the evening.
There are many indications above the mouth of the Cañon, that the valley in which our hut stood was once a large lake. The beaches and terrace levels are distinctly marked, but the barrier fall was worn down into a rapid, and the Cañon became a slant of water for some thirty miles. At the entrance the rock is worn smooth and flat in many places, and huge cisterns have been hollowed in its surface—“kettles,” as the voyageur calls them—perfectly round, and holding still the granite boulder which had chiselled them, worn to the size and roundness of a cannon-ball from ages of revolution. Some of these kettles are tiny as a tea-cup; others are huge as the tun of Heidelberg.
When I got back to the hut, night had fallen. At the end of the long river-reach a new moon hung in the orange-tinted west; the river was almost clear of ice, and it was resolved to start on the morrow.