As I swung round the bend above the head of the Canyon I espied old Jim awaiting my coming on a rocky coign of vantage above the fall. A girl in a gingham gown had dismounted from a calico pony and was climbing up to join us. With fore-blown hair and skirt she cut an entrancing silhouette against the sun-shot morning sky. I think the presence of that girl had a deal to do with the impending disaster, for I would never have thought of showing off if none but Jim had been there. But something told me that the exquisite creature could not but admire the _sang froid_ of a youth who would let his boat drift while he stood up and took a picture of the thundering cataract over which it was about to plunge. And so I did it--just that. Then, waving my camera above my head to attract Jim's attention to the act, I tossed it ashore. That was about the only sensible thing I did in my run through the Canyon. As I resumed my steering oar I saw that Jim was gesticulating wildly in an apparent endeavour to attract my attention to a comparatively rock-free chute down the left bank. Possibly if I had not wasted valuable time displaying my _sang froid_ I might have worried the _Mule_ over in that direction, and headed right for a clean run through. As it was, the contrary brute simply took the bit in her teeth and went waltzing straight for the reef of barely submerged rock at the head of the steeply cascading pitch of white water. Broadside on she sunk into the hollow of a refluent wave, struck crashingly fore and aft, and hung trembling while the full force of the current of the Yellowstone surged against her up-stream gunwale. Impressions of what followed are considerably confused in my mind, but it seems to me things happened in something like the following order: The pressure on her upper side heeled the _Mule_ far over, so that her boulder ballast began to shift and spill out at the same time the refluent wave from below began pouring across the down-stream gunwale. The more she heeled the more ballast she lost and the more water she shipped. Fortunately most of the boulders had gone before the pin of the stern-sweep broke and precipitated me after the ballast. The few niggerheads that did come streaming in my wake were smooth and round and did not seem to be falling very fast when they bumped my head and shoulders. Certainly I hardly felt them at the time, nor was I much marked from them afterwards.