One turn of the canyon revealed a break where Stanton hid his provisions in a cave—­after a second fatality in which two more of this ill-fated expedition lost their lives—­and climbed out on top.  Afterwards he re-outfitted with heavier boats and tackled the stream again.

Just below this break the scene changed as we made a sharp turn to the left.  Vasey’s Paradise—­named by Major Powell after Dr. Geo. W. Vasey, botanist of the United States Department of Agriculture—­was disclosed to view.  Beautiful streams gushed from rounded holes, fifty yards above the river.  The rock walls reminded one of an ivy-covered castle of old England, guarded by a moat uncrossed by any drawbridge.  It was trellised with vines, maidenhair ferns, and water-moss making a vivid green background for the golden yellow and burnished copper leaves which still clung to some small cottonwood trees—­the only trees we had seen in Marble Canyon.

In our haste to push on, we left the brass motion-picture tripod head on an island, from which we pictured this lovely spot.  A rapid was put behind us before we noticed our loss, and there was no going back then.

Another turn revealed a Gothic arch, or grotto, carved at the bend of the wall by the high water, with an overhang of more than a hundred feet, and a height nearly as great, for the flood waters ran above the hundred-foot stage in this narrow walled section.  Then came a gloomy, prison-like formation, with a “Bridge of Sighs” two hundred feet above a gulch, connecting the dungeon to the perpendicular wall beyond; and with a hundred cave-like openings in its sheer sides like small windows, admitting a little daylight into its dark interior.  The sullen boom of a rapid around the turn sounded like the march of an army coming up the gorge, so we climbed back into our boats after a vain attempt to climb up to some of the caves, and advanced to meet our foe.  This rapid—­the tenth for the day—­while it was clear of rocks, had an abrupt drop, with powerful waves which did all sorts of things to us and to our boats; breaking a rowlock and the four pieces of line which held it, and flooding us both with a ton of water.  We went into camp a short distance below this, in a narrow box canyon running back a hundred yards from the river, a gloomy, cathedral-like interior with sheer walls rising several hundred feet on three sides of us, and with the top of the south wall 2500 feet above us in plain sight of our camp, the one camp in Marble Canyon where our sleep was undisturbed by the roar of a rapid.  But instead of the roar of a rapid, a howling wind swept down from the Painted Desert above, piling the mingled desert sands and river sands about our beds, scattering our camp material over the bottom of the narrow gorge.

Soon after this camp—­the fourth and the last in Marble Canyon—­was left behind us, the walls began to widen out, especially on the north-northwest, and by noon we had passed from the narrow, direct canyon, into one with slopes and plateaus breaking the sheer walls, the wall on the left or southeast side being much the lower of the two, and more nearly perpendicular, rising to a height of 3200 feet, while the northwest side lifted up to the Kaibab Plateau, one point—­miles back from the river—­rising 6000 feet above us.