The road was forced to the very edge of the bank. The river became mildly excited, as if in protest at the constriction. The road grew wilder and the landscape more rugged; and suddenly, the river, tortured by the pressure of the narrow trench provided for it, began raging and foaming, and sending up a hoarse roar, which grew upon them like an approaching tempest. The road trod first a narrow shelf above the terrific rapids, and then a bridge hung like a stretched rope over an awesome abyss. For half a mile the tumult below grew, until it seemed as if water could bear no more--when suddenly the river, just now ravening through a mere fifty-foot crack in the rocks, was gone. It turned abruptly away from the road, and fell away into space. They had passed the Upper Falls, where the Yellowstone, in a great spouting curve drops a sheer hundred and twelve feet in a curtain of white water, and sends up from the bottom of the cañon its hymn to liberty, in a cloud of mist. They were no longer the tired sight-seers, with jaded senses; for this was new. They felt the thrill of power. And as they passed on, promising themselves a return when camp should be made, they cried out in delight as the Grand Cañon of the Yellowstone displayed the stupendous sluiceway into which the river had fallen. At their feet the lovely Crystal Falls of Cascade Creek played exquisitely, almost unnoted. The roar of the falls followed them to the Cañon Hotel near which they camped, and leaving the pitching of the tents to the men, they walked to the brink of the cañon, and gazed upon the most perfect scene, perhaps, that water, in its flow to the sea, has anywhere sculptured and painted to delight the eye of man. The Yosemite has greater heights; the Colorado offers huger dimensions, the Niagara or the Victoria possess mightier cataracts; but nowhere else is there such a riot of color, such dizzy heights, such glooming verdure, and such mad waters, united in one surpassingly splendid scenic whole. They saw it all--that day, and subsequent days. They lingered as though unable to leave at all. They revisited the Upper Falls before seeing the lower, so as to view them in fairness and with no injustice to what seemed unsurpassable beauty. "And now," said the Bride, "take me to the greater falls." It was as if she had seen all but the Holy of Holies, and felt the exaltation suitable for higher things. They were amazed at the tremendous plunge of more than three hundred feet which their river (as they now called it) made at the Lower Falls--even to the foot of which they descended. They looked from Inspiration Point, from Artist's Point, from Lookout Point. They watched the stream dwarfed by distance to a trickle, and strangely silent, as it wandered at the bottom of the gorge.