Something over half way down there is a grateful let-up, when the trail runs out upon a plateau watered by a musical little brook. This place is known as “The Indian Garden.” It is enclosed on three sides by lofty reddish walls, and here some Havasupai Indians are said to have had in comparatively recent times a village, and to have cultivated the land. Long before them, however, _en el tiempo de cuanto ha_, as the Pueblo story tellers say in poetic Spanish (“in the time of how long ago”), another race must have tilled the same soil, as the near-by cliffs maintain numerous remains of rock dwellings and other evidences of human occupancy. It is a pleasant, flowery, romantic spot, this Indian Garden, in the Cañon’s crimson heart, with its fascinating environment of rock sculpturings that seem the towers, palaces and temples of an enchanted city awaiting the lifting of a spell. At the plateau’s outer edge you have a stupendous view of the colossal gorge and the muddy torrent of the river, leaping and roaring 1300 feet below. You may make the Indian Garden the limit of your descent, or you may continue to the river itself, corkscrewing down among the crevices and rockbound ways and echoes of the inexorable wall until you come out upon a little beach, past which, more terrible than beautiful, the savage torrent thunders and cascades and tears its course to freedom. You will be glad to get into the blessed upper world again, but you would not have missed the experience for a greater cost of clambering. The Hermit Rim road is a first-class modern highway (so far barred, thank heaven, to automobiles), extending about 7½ miles westward from El Tovar by way of Hopi Point to the Hermit Basin. Part of it passes through beautiful stretches of park-like forest, emerging upon the dizzy brink of the Cañon with magnificent outlooks over chasm and river to distant mountains and cloud-piled sky. If you enjoy walking, it is pleasant to do this trip one way in the public coach and the other afoot by way of Rowe’s Well. The Hermit Rim Road ends at the head of a comparatively new trail to the river, a sort of trail _de luxe_, 4 feet wide and protected by a stone wall very reassuring to the apprehensive. As on the Bright Angel trail, there is a plateau midway. Here a public camp is maintained, where accommodations for an over-night stay may be had. From this camp to the river must be done afoot—an easy grade, it is said, but I cannot speak from personal knowledge. There is a trail connecting the lower portions of Hermit and Bright Angel trails, so that one may go to the river by one route and return by the other. This consumes 3 days ordinarily, and must be taken as a camping trip with its concomitant ups and downs. It is hardly to be recommended to any but the reasonably robust—and good natured!