A canyon, from the Spanish, is a deep gully or gorge, either with a river or stream flowing through the bottom or not, but the canyons in this part of the Rockies nearly always have a stream at the bottom.
We had again reached the river where it flowed on a more even course. It was entirely frozen over, but we were high above it, and the difficulty was to get down.
Pierre was the first to start. Away went the dogs with the sleigh, Pierre hauling it back and trying to stop its way. But all would not do, and presently he, dogs, and sleigh, went rolling over and over, until they plunged into the snow at the bottom, to a considerable depth.
“Och sure I’ll be wiser,” cried Corney; and he made fast a tail rope to a tree, thus enabling him to lower it gently for a short distance at a time. In slipping it, however, from one tree to another, the sleigh gathered way, but scarcely had it got abreast of the dogs than it sheered off on one side of a small tree, the dogs rolling on the other. The tree—a mere sapling—bent, and the impetus carried the whole train nearly twenty feet out towards its end—the dogs hanging by their traces on one side, counterbalancing the sleigh on the other, where they swayed to and fro in the most ludicrous fashion, yelping, barking, and struggling to get free, and running a great risk of being hanged.
“Surely I’ll be afther losin’ me dogs, and the sleigh will be dashed to pieces!” cried Corney, wringing his hands in his despair.
Uncle Donald told us to take charge of Rose; then springing down the bank with the agility of a young man, axe in hand, with a few blows he cut the traces and set the poor dogs free, while the sleigh bounded down the hill into the snow at the bottom, where Pierre was trying to put his train to rights, the new arrival adding not a little to his difficulties.
Fearing that Rose might meet with a similar accident, Uncle Donald, taking her in his arms, carried her down, while Hugh and I managed the sleigh. As soon as we were all to rights, we had the satisfaction of seeing before us a clear “glare” of ice. The dogs, entering into our feelings, set off at a scamper to cross it.
In less than an hour we had got over a greater distance than we had the whole of the previous day. We had now reached the entrance to the pass. On either side rose pyramidical peaks, covered with perpetual snow, three thousand feet above the valley. Shortly afterwards we came to the foot of a magnificent glacier, which must have been scarcely less than a mile in length and several hundred feet in height. As we had made a good day’s journey, and evening was approaching, Uncle Donald was looking out for a place at which to camp. We had just fixed on a spot on the bank of the river at the edge of a thick belt of trees, which here intervened between it and the cliffs, when a roar as of distant thunder reached our ears.
“Look out! look out!” cried the Indians in chorus, and they pointed upwards.