another hundred yards, through breakers; how, we scarcely know. We find
the other boats have turned into an eddy at the foot of the fall, and
are waiting to catch us as we come, for the men have seen that our boat
is swamped. They push out as we come near, and pull us in against the
wall. We bail our boat, and on we go again.
The walls, now, are more than a mile in height--a vertical distance
difficult to appreciate. Stand on the south steps of the Treasury
Building, in Washington, and look down Pennsylvania Avenue to the
Capitol Park, and measure this distance overhead, and imagine cliffs to
extend to that altitude, and you will understand what I mean; or, stand
at Canal Street, in New York, and look up Broadway to Grace Church, and
you have about the distance; or, stand at Lake Street Bridge in Chicago,
and look down to the Central Depot, and you have it again.
A thousand feet of this is up through granite crags, then steep slopes
and perpendicular cliffs rise, one above another, to the summit. The
gorge is black and narrow below, red and gray and flaring above, with
crags and angular projections on the walls, which, cut in many places by
side canons, seem to be a vast wilderness of rocks. Down in these grand,
gloomy depths we glide, ever listening, for the mad waters keep up their
roar; ever watching, ever peering ahead, for the narrow canon is
winding, and the river is closed in so that we can see but a few
hundred yards, and what there may be below we know not; but we listen
for falls, and watch for rocks, or stop now and then, in the bay of a
recess, to admire the gigantic scenery. And ever, as we go, there is
some new pinnacle or tower, some crag or peak, some distant view of the
upper plateau, some strange-shaped rock, or some deep, narrow side
canon. Then we come to another broken fall, which appears more difficult
than the one we ran this morning.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account