“Paddle!” shouted Thurstane, pointing to the creek.  “Don’t let her go by.  This is our place.”

A desperate struggle dragged the boat out of the rushing Colorado into the tranquillity of the basin.  Everything was landed; the boat itself was hoisted on to the rocks; the voyage was over.

“Think ye know yer way, Capm?” queried Glover, squinting doubtfully up the arid recesses of the smaller canon.

“Of course I may be mistaken.  But even if it is not Diamond Creek, it will take us in our direction.  We have made westing enough to have the Cactus Pass very nearly south of us.”

As there was still a chance of returning to the river, the boat was taken to pieces, rolled up, and hidden under a pile of stones and driftwood.  The small remnant of jerked meat was divided into three portions.  Glover, on account of his inferior muscle and his rheumatism, was relieved of his gun, which was given to Sweeny.  Canteens were filled, blankets slung, ammunition belts buckled, and the march commenced.

Arrived at a rocky knoll which looked up both waterways, the three men halted to take a last glance at the Great Canon, the scene of a pilgrimage that had been a poem, though a terrible one.  The Colorado here was not more than fifty yards wide, and only a few hundred yards of its course were visible either way, for the confluence was at the apex of a bend.  The dark, sullen, hopeless, cruel current rushed out of one mountain-built mystery into another.  The walls of the abyss rose straight from the water into dizzy abutments, conical peaks, and rounded masses, beyond and above which gleamed the distant sunlit walls of a higher terrace of the plateau.

“Come along wid ye,” said Sweeny to Glover, “It’s enough to give ye the rheumatiz in the oyes to luk at the nasty black hole.  I’m thinkin’ it’s the divil’s own place, wid the fires out.”

The Diamond Creek Canon, although far inferior to its giant neighbor, was nevertheless a wonderful excavation, striking audaciously into sombre mountain recesses, sublime with precipices, peaks, and grotesque masses.  The footing was of the ruggedest, a debris of confused and eroded rocks, the pathway of an extinct river.  One thing was beautiful:  the creek was a perfect contrast to the turbid Colorado; its waters were as clear and bright as crystal.  Sweeny halted over and over to look at it, his mouth open and eyes twinkling like a pleased dog.

“An’ there’s nothing nagurish about that, now,” he chuckled.  “A pataty ud laugh to be biled in it.”

After slowly ascending for a quarter of a mile, they turned a bend and came upon a scene which seemed to them like a garden.  They were in a broad opening, made by the confluence of two canons.  Into this gigantic rocky nest had been dropped an oasis of turf and of thickets of green willows.  Through the centre of the verdure the Diamond Creek flowed dimpling over a pebbly bed, or shot in sparkles between barring bowlders, or plunged over shelves in toy cascades.  The travellers had seen nothing so hospitable in nature since leaving the country of the Moquis weeks before.