Passing through Horseshoe,—­another very short canyon,—­we found deep, placid pools, and sheer, light red walls rising about four hundred feet on either side, then sloping back steeply to the tree-covered mountains.  In the middle of this canyon Emery was startled out of a day-dream by a rock falling into the water close beside him, with never a sound of warning.  Years spent in the canyons had accustomed Emery and me to such occurrences; but Jimmy, unused to great gorges and towering cliffs, was much impressed by this incident.  After all, it is only the unusual that is terrible.  Jimmy was ready enough to take his chances at dodging bricks hurled by a San Francisco earthquake, but never got quite used to rocks descending from a source altogether out of sight.  Small wonder, after all!  Later we were to experience more of this thing, and on a scale to startle a stoic!

We halted at the end of Horseshoe, early in the afternoon of September 14, 1911, one week out from Green River City.  Camp No. 6 was pitched on a gravelly shore beside Sheep Creek, a clear sparkling stream, coming in from the slopes of the Uintah range.  Just above us, on the west, rose three jagged cliffs, about five hundred feet high, reminding one by their shape of the Three Brothers of Yosemite Valley.  Here, again, we were treated to another wonderful example of geologic displacement, the rocks of Horseshoe Canyon lying in level strata; while those of Kingfisher, which followed, were standing on end.  Sheep Creek, flowing from the west, finds an easy course through the fault, at the division of the canyons.  The balance of this day was spent in carefully packing our material and rearranging it in our boats, for we expected hard work to follow.

Tempted by the rippling song of the brook, and by tales of fish to be found therein, we spent two hours fishing from its banks on the morning of the 15th.  But the foliage of overhanging trees and shrubs was dense, making it difficult to cast our lines, or even to climb along its shores, and our small catch of two trout, which were fried with a strip of bacon to add flavour, only whetted our appetites for more.

It was a little late in the season for many birds.  Here in Kingfisher Canyon were a few of the fish-catching birds from which the canyon took its name.  There were many of the tireless cliff-swallows scattered all through these canyons, wheeling and darting, ever on the wing.  These, with the noisy crested jays, an occasional “camp-robber,” the little nuthatches, the cheerful canyon wren with his rollicking song, the happy water-ousel, “kill-deer,” and road-runners and the water birds,—­ducks, geese, and mud-hens, with an occasional crane,—­made up the bird life seen in the open country and in these upper canyons.  Earlier in the season it must be a bird’s paradise, for berries and seeds would then be plentiful.