“Liftinant, let’s go over with a whoop,” called Sweeny.  “It’s much aisier.”

“Keep quiet, my lad,” replied the officer.  “We must hear orders.”

“All right, Liftinant,” said Sweeny, relieved by having spoken.

At this moment Glover shouted cheerfully, “We ain’t dead yit There’s a ledge.”

“I see it,” nodded Thurstane.

“Where there’s a ledge there’s an eddy,” screamed Glover, raising his voice to pierce the hiss of the rapid and the roar of the cascade.

Below them, jutting out from the precipitous northern bank, was a low bar of rock over which the river did not sweep.  It was the remnant of a once lofty barrier; the waters had, as it were, gnawed it to the bone, but they had not destroyed it.  In two minutes the voyagers were beside it, paddling with all their strength against the eddy which whirled along its edge toward the cataract, and tossing over the short, spiteful ripples raised by the sudden turn of the current.  With a “Hooroo!” Sweeny tumbled ashore, lariat in hand, and struck his army shoes into the crevices of the shattered sandstone.  In five minutes more the boat was unloaded and lifted upon the ledge.

The travellers did not go to look at the cataract; their immediate and urgent need was to get by it.  Making up their bundles as usual, they commenced a struggle with the intricacies and obstacles of the portage.  The eroded, disintegrated plateau descended to the river in a huge confusion of ruin, and they had to pick their way for miles through a labyrinth of cliffs, needles, towers, and bowlders.  Reaching the river once more, they found themselves upon a little plain of moderately fertile earth, the first plain and the first earth which they had seen since entering the canon.  The cataract was invisible; a rock cathedral several hundred feet high hid it; they could scarcely discern its lofty ghost of spray.

Two miles away, in the middle of the plain, appeared a ruin of adobe walls, guttered and fissured by the weather.  It was undoubtedly a monument of that partially civilized race, Aztec, Toltec, or Moqui, which centuries ago dotted the American desert with cities, and passed away without leaving other record.  With his field-glass Thurstane discovered what he judged to be another similar structure crowning a distant butte.  They had no time to visit these remains, and they resumed their voyage.

After skirting the plain for several miles, they reentered the canon, drifted two hours or more between its solemn walls, and then came out upon a wide sweep of open country.  The great canon of the San Juan had been traversed nearly from end to end in safety.  When the adventurers realized their triumph they rose to their feet and gave nine hurrahs.

“It’s loike a rich man comin’ through the oye av a needle,” observed Sweeny.

“Only this haint much the air ’f the New Jerusalem,” returned Glover, glancing at the arid waste of buttes and ranges in the distance.