cut the walls in regular sections like gigantic city blocks, instead of an unbroken avenue.  Small rapids continued to appear, there were a few small islands, and divided currents, so shallow they sometimes kept us guessing which one to take, but we continued to run them all without a pause.  We would have run out of the canyon that day but for one thing.  Five mountain-sheep were seen from our boats in one of the sloping grassy meadows above the river.  We landed below, carried our cameras back, and spent half an hour in trying to see them again, but they had taken alarm.

Placer claim locations and fresh burro tracks were seen in the sand at our last Grand Canyon camp, and a half mile below us we could see out into open country.  We found the walls, or the end of the table-land, to be about two thousand feet high, with the canyon emerging at a sharp angle so that a narrow ridge, or “hogs-back” lay on the left side of the stream.  Once out in the open the walls were seen to be quite steep, but could be climbed to the top almost any place without trouble.  Saturday, January the 13th, we were out of the canyon at last, and the towering walls, now friendly, now menacing, were behind us.  Three hundred and sixty-five large rapids, and nearly twice as many small rapids, were behind us and the dream of ten years was an accomplished fact.  But best of all, there were no tragedies or fatalities to record.  Perhaps we did look a little the worse for wear, but a few days away from the river would repair all that.  The boats had a bump here and there, besides the one big patch on the Edith; a little mending and a little caulking would put both the Edith and Defiance in first-class condition.

There is little of interest to record of our 175-mile run to Needles, California.  It was a land of desolation—­an extension of the Mojave Desert on the south, and the alkaline flats and mineral mountains of Nevada on the north, of Death Valley and the Funeral Mountains of California to the northwest—­a burned-out land of grim-looking mountains extending north and south across our way; a dried-out, washed-out, and wind-swept land of extensive flats and arroyos; a land of rock and gravel cemented in marls and clay; ungraced with any but the desert plants,—­cactus and thorny shrubs,—­with little that was pleasing or attractive.  A desert land it is true, but needing only the magic touch of water to transform much of it into a garden spot.  Even as it was, a few months later it would be covered with the flaming blossoms of the desert growth, which seem to try to make amends in one or two short months for nearly a year of desolation.

A wash ran along the base of the plateau from which we had emerged.  An abandoned road and ferry showed that this had once been a well-travelled route.  The stream had a good current and we pulled away, only stopping once to see the last of our plateau before a turn and deepening banks hid it from view.  We wondered if the water ever dropped in a precipitous fall over the face of the wall and worked back, a little every year, as it does at Niagara.  We could hardly doubt that there were some such falls back in the dim past when these canyons were being carved.