The whole landscape was a hideous Walhalla, a fit abode for the savage giant gods of the old Scandinavians.  Thor and Woden would have been at home in it.  The Cyclops and Titans would have been too little for it.  The Olympian deities could not be conceived of as able or willing to exist in such a hideous chaos.  No creature of the Greek imagination would have been a suitable inhabitant for it except Prometheus alone.  Here his eternal agony and boundless despair might not have been out of place.

There was no comfort in the river.  It came out of unknown and inhospitable mystery, and went into a mystery equally unknown and inhospitable.  To what fate it might lead was as uncertain as whence it arrived.  A sombre flood, reddish brown in certain lights, studded with rocks which raised ghosts of unmoving foam, flowing with a speed which perpetually boiled and eddied, promising nothing to the voyager but thousand-fold shipwreck, a breathless messenger from the mountains to the ocean, it wheeled incessantly from stony portal to stony portal, a brief gleam of power and cruelty.  The impression which it produced was in unison with the sublime malignity and horror of the landscape.

Depressed by fatigue, the desperate situation of the party, and the menace of the frightful scene around her, Mrs. Stanley could not and would not speak to Thurstane when he mounted the roof, and turned away to hide the tears in her eyes.

“You see I am housekeeping,” said Clara with a smile.  “Look how clean the room in the tower has been swept.  I had some brooms made of tufted grass.  There are our beds in the corners.  These hard-finished walls are really handsome.”

She stopped, hesitated a moment, looked at him anxiously, and then added, “Have you seen Pepita?”

“Yes,” he replied, deciding to be frank.  “I think I have discovered her tied to a tree.”

“Oh! to be tortured!” exclaimed Clara, wringing her hands and beginning to cry.

“We will ransom her,” he hurried on.  “I am going down to hold a parley with the Apaches.”

“You!” exclaimed the girl, catching his arm.  “Oh no!  Oh, why did we come here!”

Fearing lest he should be persuaded to evade what he considered his duty, he pressed her hand fervently and hurried away.  Yes, he repeated, it was his duty; to parley with the Apaches was a most dangerous enterprise; he did not feel at liberty to order any other to undertake it.

Finding Coronado, he said to him, “I am going down to ransom Pepita.  You know the Indians better than I do.  How many people shall I take?”

A gleam of satisfaction shot across the dark face of the Mexican as he replied, “Go alone.”

“Certainly,” he insisted, in response to the officer’s stare of surprise.  “If you take a party, they’ll doubt you.  If you go alone, they’ll parley.  But, my dear Lieutenant, you are magnificent.  This is the finest moment of your life.  Ah! only you Americans are capable of such impulses.  We Spaniards haven’t the nerve.”