Although the translation does not draw attention to the fact, the term employed in the Chinese record to describe the course of the stream which passes through the Great Canyon, is =chu=. Now this word is employed to designate water which is "shooting over a ledge" (Williams' dict. p. 89), and its use is entirely appropriate in a description of the course of the water in the channel of the Colorado. The bed of the stream is exceedingly irregular and consists indeed of a succession of =ledges=--producing a series of rapids, falls, or cataracts. Were the water to disappear, the exposed bed of the Colorado, with its ascending series of steps, might be likened indeed with truth to a stairway for giants or gods. The falls caused by =ledges= (=chu=) are exceedingly numerous. One navigator's log contains many such entries as the following: "Still more rapids and falls today. In one, the Emma Dean [a boat] is caught in a whirlpool, and set spinning about (n. 16). One subdivision of the Grand Canyon is known as Cataract Canyon, and this section "in its 41 miles, has 75 rapids and cataracts, and 57 of these are crowded into 19 miles, with falls, in places, of 16 to 20 feet" (n. 17.) All accounts concur in representing the stream as remarkable for the fury and number of its falls. To ascend the Colorado is a sheer impossibility and even to descend the stream is an enterprise rarely indeed attempted or achieved. Only rafts or life-boats, backed by pluck and luck, stand a chance of getting through--in pieces. The mariners all wear life-belts and are just as often in the water as they are out of it. Evidently a River of =Ledges= is here. Surely the term =Chu= (or water shooting over =Ledges=) applies with peculiar force to the career of this "wildest of rivers"--the Colorado. THE COLORADO--BOTTOMLESS? Knowing quite well as we do, that our mighty river possesses a very substantial bottom composed of step-like ledges of rock, we learn with surprise that it is said to flow through a section described as =bottomless=! Is not such a statement or assertion absurd? But what did the ancient writer mean? What could he have meant? The translation states that, according to a poem, the =Tsang-shan-wu=, "in the east there is a stream flowing in a =bottomless= ravine. It is supposed to be this Canyon"--the "Great Canyon of the Region beyond the Eastern Sea." The Chinese term rendered "Canyon" is =Hoh=, which stands also for "a bed of a torrent, a deep gully or wady; a valley" (see Williams dict. p. 453.) Of course, a =Ta= (or "Great") =Hoh= ought to be a Great Canyon, or a remarkable deep gorge or valley containing the bed of a torrent. We have already been informed that a =Chu= (or river of ledges and falls) is in the =Ta Hoh=, or mighty gorge beyond the Eastern Sea. We also perceive that the title =Ta Hoh= applies properly to the mountain-hemmed course of our Colorado (which connects with Middle Park and runs to the Gulf.)