We all laughed heartily at Tom's complaints. He was never so funny as when he was irritable.
"Another thing," said Tom in conclusion, "I'm not going to give up that search for treasure till we find it."
About noon of the day we started we saw ahead of us the shining walls of the greatest chasm that we had yet faced.
"Is that the Grand Canyon itself?" I asked.
"No," said Jim, who had been studying the maps carefully during our last stop. "That must be the Marble Canyon. The Little Colorado will come in below there somewhere."
"Is it really marble?" inquired Tom.
"You can see for yourself soon," said Jim.
However, names are deceitful things. It was indeed a marvelous gorge into which we entered. Where the waves of the river had worked, there shone a beautiful greyish marble, cut in curious deep lines by the action of the water, but above the walls were stained a deep red.
There was a massive solidness about this marble canyon that made the sandstone gorges appear light and airy. The walls rose in places to over three thousand feet in height.
Sometimes the walls were in thousand-foot terraces, sometimes well nigh perpendicular, at least so it seemed. It was, with all its grandeur, only the entrance hall for the Grand Canyon itself. Its peculiarity was in the sharp thrust out cliffs that rose perpendicularly from the river.