All along the plateau there are by-trails and half-trails and old trails where immense herds of wild burros congregate, and the bleached bones of their ancestors lie thick on the ground. Not an hour’s ride from the Bright Angel Trail is hidden one of the prettiest spots on earth. A little side path which few take leads from it around a great porphyry-colored cliff. Here we made camp after a dry, burning trip, our horses reeking with lather, and gasping with thirst. We rode along a little stream choked with cotton wood saplings. “Ride ahead,” ordered our sympathetic guide, who had a sense of the dramatic common to most of his profession. He wanted to give us the pleasure of discovering for ourselves. In a moment we came upon it, amazed. Gone was the arid Golgotha we had been struggling through. The stream had widened just where a rocky shelf dropped down to shelter it with a high wall. Low-growing trees and shrubs on the other side left an opening only wide enough to penetrate, and we suddenly entered a miniature grotto which seemed more the work of a landscape artist than of nature. The rock and shrubs enclosed completely a green pool, wide and deep enough to swim in. The water was cold and clear, its bottom fringed with thick velvety moss. The trees met overhead so densely that the sky showed only in tiny flecks on an emerald surface vivified by the reflection of sunlit leaves. The curved rock hiding the pool on three sides was covered arm-deep from top to bottom with maidenhair fern, and sprinkled through this hanging garden were the bright scarlet blossoms of the Indian paintbrush. As a crowning delight three little white cascades trickled through this greenery into the pool. A nymph would want to bathe here. We were not nymphs, but the weather was hot, the guide discreet and the pool so hidden it could not be seen ten feet away. We camped gratefully over-night here. When Indians were plentiful in the Canyon this was one of their favorite camps. Around the corner of the ledge, we came upon some dry caves showing traces of former habitation. In a little stone oven they may have built I saw the dusty tail of a rattler flicker and disappear among the warm ashes of our fire. The refreshed horses munched all night on the luxuriant grass, sometimes coming perilously near to stepping on our sleeping-bags. Toby woke me at dawn. “Look!” One hundred asses were circled about, gazing fascinated at us. When we moved they galloped to the four winds.