we unsaddled and lariated our horses, and even refreshed ourselves with such creature comforts as our larder readily afforded, before we deigned a survey of these great wonders of nature.  On our walk down the creek to the river, struck with the beauty of its cascades, we even neglected the greater, to admire the lesser wonders.  Bushing with great celerity through a deep defile of lava and obsidian, worn into caverns and fissures, the stream, one-fourth of a mile from its debouchure, breaks into a continuous cascade of remarkable beauty, consisting of a fall of five feet, succeeded by another of fifteen into a grotto formed by proximate rocks imperfectly arching it, whence from a crystal pool of unfathomable depth at their base, it lingers as if half reluctant to continue its course, or as if to renew its power, and then glides gracefully over a descending, almost perpendicular, ledge, veiling the rocks for the distance of eighty feet.  Mr. Hedges gave to this succession of cascades the name “Crystal fall.”  It is very beautiful; but the broken and cavernous gorge through which it passes, worn into a thousand fantastic shapes, bearing along its margin the tracks of grizzly bears and lesser wild animals, scattered throughout with huge masses of obsidian and other volcanic matter—­the whole suggestive of nothing earthly nor heavenly—­received at our hands, and not inaptly as I conceive, the name of “The Devil’s Den.”

I presume that many persons will question the taste evinced by our company in the selection of names for the various objects of interest we have thus far met with; but they are all so different from any of Nature’s works that we have ever seen or heard of, so entirely out of range of human experience, and withal so full of exhibitions which can suggest no other fancy than that which our good grandmothers have painted on our boyish imaginations as a destined future abode, that we are likely, almost involuntarily, to pursue the system with which we have commenced, to the end of our journey.  A similar imagination has possessed travelers and visitors to other volcanic regions.

We have decided to remain at this point through the entire day to-morrow, and examine the canon and falls.  From the brief survey of the canon I was enabled to make before darkness set in, I am impressed with its awful grandeur, and I realize the impossibility of giving to any one who has not seen a gorge similar in character, any idea of it.

[Illustration:  Cornelius Hedges.]

It is getting late, and it is already past our usual bedtime, and Jake Smith is calling to me to “turn in” and give him a chance to sleep.  There is in what I have already seen so much of novelty to fill the mind and burden the memory, that unless I write down in detail the events of each day, and indeed almost of each hour as it passes, I shall not be able to prepare for publication on my return home any clear or satisfactory account of these wonders.  So