CHAPTER XVIII

MARBLE HALLS AND MARBLE WALLS

There was little of the spectacular in our work the next day as we slowly and laboriously dragged an empty boat upstream against the swift-running current, taking advantage of many little eddies, but finding much of the shore swept clean.  I had ample opportunity to ponder on the wisdom of my attempt to save time by running the Soap Creek Rapid instead of making a portage, while we carried our loads over the immense boulders that banked the stream, down to a swift piece of water, past which we could not well bring the boats or while we developed the wet plates from the ruined plate-holders.  It was with no little surprise that we found all the plates, except a few which were not uniformly wet and developed unevenly, could be saved.  It took a day and a half to complete all this work.

Marble Canyon was now beginning to narrow up with a steep, boulder-covered slope on either side, three or four hundred feet high; with a sheer wall of dark red limestone of equal height directly above that.  There was also a plateau of red sandstone and distant walls topped with light-coloured rock, the same formations with which we were familiar in the Grand Canyon.  The inner gorge had narrowed from a thousand feet or more down to four hundred feet, the slope at the river was growing steeper and gradually disappearing, and each mile of travel had added a hundred feet or more to the height of the walls.  Soon after resuming our journey that afternoon, the slope disappeared altogether, and the sheer walls came down close to the water.  There were few places where one could climb out, had we desired to do so.  This hard limestone wall, which Major Powell had named the marble wall, had a disconcerting way of weathering very smooth and sheer, with a few ledges and fewer breaks.

We made a short run that day, going over a few rapids, stopping an hour to make some pictures where an immense rock had fallen from the cliff above into the middle of the river bed, leaving a forty-foot channel on one side, and scarcely any on the other.  Below this we found a rapid so much like the Soap Creek Rapid in appearance that a portage seemed advisable.  It was evening when we got the Edith to the lower end of this rapid after almost losing her, as we lined her down, and she was wedged under a sloping rock that overhung the rapid.  We had two ropes, one at either end, attached to the boat in this case.  Emery stood below the rock ready to pull her in when once past the rock.  There was a sickening crackling of wood as the deck of the boat wedged under and down to the level of the water, and at Emery’s call I released the boat, throwing the rope into the river, and hurried to help him.  He was almost dragged into the water as the boat swung around fortunately striking against a sand-bank, instead of the many rocks that lined the shore.  We were working with