All day they had to work, to save their lives.  At night they had to sleep on cold rocks without blankets enough to keep them warm.  The great rock walls on either side of them made an awful prison.  They could not tell how far they had gone, nor did they know just how far they had to go.

At last the food ran short.  The men were tired of musty flour.  They had lost their baking powder, and they had to make heavy bread.  They thought that even this bad food would give out before they could reach the end of the canyon.

But one day they came to a little patch of earth by the side of the river.  On this some corn was growing.  The Indians living on the bare rocks above had come down by some steep path to plant this little cornfield.  The corn was not yet large enough to eat.  But among the corn grew some green squashes.

Major Powell’s men were too near starving not to take anything they could find to eat.  They took some of the green squashes and put them into their boats.  Then they ran on down the canyon, out of the reach of any Indians.  Here they stewed some of the squashes, and ate them.

When they had been fifteen days in this great canyon, they had but a little flour and some dried apples left.  They had now come to a place where one could climb up out of the gorge.  But they did not know how far they were from the end.  Three of the men here resolved to leave the party.  They did not believe that there was any hope of running out of the canyon in the boats alive.  They took their share of the food and some guns, and bade the others good-by.  They climbed up out of the canyon, and were soon after killed by Indians.

One of the boats was by this time nearly worn out by the rocks.  As there were not enough men left to manage three boats, this one was left behind.  Major Powell, with those of his men who were still with him, went on down the awful river.  The very next day they ran suddenly out into an open space.  They had at last got out of the Grand Canyon, which had held them prisoners for sixteen days.

They went on down the river, and the next day after this they found some settlers drawing a seine or net to catch fish in the river.  These settlers had heard that Major Powell and his men were lost, and they were keeping a lookout for any pieces of his boats that might float down from above.  Food of many kinds was sent from the nearest settlement to feast the hungry men who had so bravely struggled through the Grand Canyon.

THE-MAN-THAT-
DRAWS-THE-HANDCART.

George Northrup was but a boy of fifteen when his father died.  Having nothing to keep him at home, he went to the Indian country, which at that time was in Minnesota.  He had a boyish notion that he could go through to the Pacific Ocean by making his way from one tribe to another.  When he was eighteen years old, a few years before the Civil War, he tried to make this journey.  He loaded his provisions into a handcart, and took a big dog along for company.  For thirty-six days he did not see anybody, or hear any voice but his own.  Then he found paths made by Indian war parties.  He knew, that, if one of these parties should find him, he would be killed.