But [continued Mr. Stone] it was also to get away from work! For the fun of the thing! Year after year the voice of many waters had said: "Come join us in our joyous, boisterous journey to the sea, and you shall know the ecstasy of wrestling with Nature naked-handed and in the open, as befits the measure of a man." It takes on many forms and numberless variations, this thing called play. Its appealing voices come from far and near, in waking and in dreams; from quiet, peaceful places they allure with the assurance of longed-for rest; from the deeps of unfrequented regions they whisper of eager day- and night-time hours brimming with the fullness of heart's desire, while bugle-throated, their challenge sounds forever from every unsealed height. I presume it is quite true that the chance of disaster (provided we consider death as being such) followed us like the eyes of the forest that note every move of the intruder but never reveal themselves. But somehow or other the snarling threat of the rapids did not creep into the little red hut where fear lives, and so burden our task with irresolution or the handicap of indecision; therefore, whatever dangers may have danced invisible attendance on our daily toil, they rarely revealed themselves in the form of accident, and never in the shape of difficulties too great to be overcome, though sometimes the margin was rather small. Looking back now at the chance of our having been caught, a shade of hesitation flits over the abiding desire to see it all again, but the free, buoyant life of the open, unvexed by the sedate and superfluous trifles of conventionality, the spirit of fair companionship vouchsafed by the wilderness, and the river that seemed to take us by the hand and lead us down its gorgeous aisles where grandeur, glory, and desolation are all merged into one--these still are as a voice and a vision that hold the imagination with singular enchantment. Any one interested in the geology of the Grand Cañon will find much in the books of Powell and Dellenbaugh, but best of all are the recent reports of the Geological Survey. For glimpses of the interesting characters who frequent this region, and for a sober account of an array of Grand Cañon adventures, nothing equals the narrative in "Through the Grand Cañon from Wyoming to Mexico," by Ellsworth L. Kolb. Professor John C. Van Dyke, author of "The Desert," has most ably summed up the Grand Cañon in three monumental sentences: "More mysterious in its depth than the Himalayas in their height.... The Grand Cañon remains not the eighth but the first wonder of the world. There is nothing like it."