Not till we had wound down the trail overlooking the river and leading under the bridge, not till we dismounted under the buttresses of the arch, and saw that they themselves were young hills did we get an idea of its majesty. Our Navajo walked around it, for no good Navajo will pass under the sacred arch unless he knows the prayer suitable to this occasion. We followed Hostein Chee, and camped on a slope on the other side. From this angle the bridge appeared stupendous, towering above cliffs really much higher, but seeming less by the perspective. Unlike so many of Nature’s freaks, it required no imagination to make it look like an arch. Symmetrical and rhythmic of outline, with its massive buttresses in beautiful proportion to the rest, it spans the San Juan, which, cutting through the narrow canyon, curves about to form deep pools into which we lost no time in plunging, after our hot and nearly bathless journey. Whoever called it a bridge misnamed it, for it bridges nothing. Before seeing it we had ambitions to climb to the top, and walk across, and while I daresay we should all have gone if any one of us had insisted on attempting it, we may have been secretly relieved that nobody insisted too hard. It means a stiff climb negotiated with ropes, up an adjacent cliff. From the level top of this cliff one works around to a monument rock near the southwest end of the arch where a single piñon grows from a niche. A rope is swung from the cliff above, fastened in the piñon, and over a twenty-foot gap, at a height of three hundred feet and more above the rock-strewn river, one jumps to the shelving arch of the bridge. Returning is even worse than going--I believe only eight people have ever mounted the bridge. [Illustration: RAINBOW BRIDGE, UTAH. Symmetrical and rhythmic of outline, it spans the San Juan.] The Golfer meanwhile had reached the tee of his ambitions, with two dozen balls and his trusty brassie. We came on him at the edge of the tumbled river, casting a doubtful eye up the rough slopes and crag-strewn course. “Bunkered, by gosh,” we heard him say. “If you don’t mind a little climb,” said the guide, “I think we can fix you all right.” Accordingly we stuffed our pockets with golf-balls, while the Golfer tied the remainder to his waist, and began to climb one of the smooth cliffs to the right of the arch, with the understanding that whoever had good courage might go on to the top of the bridge. The last lap of the climb brought us to a ledge which went sheer in the air for about twenty feet (it seemed like two hundred), without visible means of support. But nothing daunts an Old-Timer. Ours twirled his rope, lassoed an overhanging shrub at the top of the ledge, and shinnied up like a cat, twisted it twice about the shrubs and then around his wrists, and one by one, each according to his nature,--but not like a cat,--we followed.