While they were thus uncontrollable the boats entered a rapid, and one of them was driven in shore, but as there was no foothold for a portage the men pushed into the stream again. The next minute a reflex wave filled the open compartment and water-logged her: breaker after breaker rolled over her, and one capsized her. The men were thrown out, but they managed to cling to her, and as they were swept down the other boats rescued them. Heavy clouds rolled in the canon, filling it with gloom. Sometimes they hung above from wall to wall and formed a roof: then a gust of wind from a side-canon made a rift in them and the blue heavens were revealed, or they dispersed in patches which settled on the crags, while puffs of vapor issued out of the smaller gulches, and occasionally formed bars across the canon, one above another, each opening a different vista. When they discharged their rains little rills first trickled down the cliff, and these soon became brooks: the brooks grew into creeks and tumbled down through innumerable cascades, which added their music to the roar of the river. As soon as the rain ceased rills, brooks, creeks and cascades disappeared, their birth and death being equally sudden. [Illustration: LIGHTHOUSE ROCK IN THE CANON OF DESOLATION.] Desolate and inaccessible as the canon is, many ruins of buildings are found perched upon ledges in the stupendous cliffs. In some instances the mouths of caves have been walled in, and the evidences all point to a race for ever dreading and fortifying itself against an invader. Why did these people chose their embattlements so far away from all tillable land and sources of subsistence? Major Powell suggests this solution of the problem: For a century or two after the settlement of Mexico many expeditions were sent into the country now comprised in Arizona and New Mexico for the purpose of bringing the town-building people under the dominion of the Spanish government. Many of their villages were destroyed, and the inhabitants fled to regions at that time unexplored; and there are traditions among the existing Pueblos that the canons were these lands. The Spanish conquerors had a monstrous greed for gold and a lust for saving souls. "Treasure they must have--if not on earth why, then, in heaven--and when they failed to find heathen temples bedecked with silver they propitiated Heaven by seizing the heathen themselves. There is yet extant a copy of a record made by a heathen artist to express his conception of the demands of the conquerors. In one part of the picture we have a lake, and near by stands a priest pouring water on the head of a native. On the other side a poor Indian has a cord around his throat. Lines run from these two groups to a central figure, a man with a beard and full Spanish panoply. The interpretation of the picture-writing is this: 'Be baptized as this saved heathen, or be hanged as this damned heathen.' Doubtless some of