page 41, only on a much larger scale.  The next day, before stopping for dinner, we ran nine rapids with no accident.  The river was wider than in the upper canyons, and while the low state of the water made harder work and pounded the boats more, I believe that on the whole it was an advantage.  The current was less fierce and consequently the boats were always more controllable.  Yet when the water falls below a certain point the danger of striking rocks is so much increased that a rapid which, at a little higher stage would be easy to run must be avoided entirely by a portage or a let-down.  The waves at low water are also smaller and hence less likely to upset a boat.

In many places we would lower a boat by lines near the shore, with two men in her, and when a rock appeared they fended her off, or jumped into the water and eased the craft along, touching bottom where they could.  This worked very well for this place and the stage of water, though on this river one must ever be ready to adapt himself to differing conditions.  Rapids were very numerous, but we succeeded in passing them in one way or another without seriously injuring the boats.  The walls grew to magnificent proportions.  At one camp we could see, on the very top of the cliff opposite, an object that from our position was the counterpart of a log cabin.  Tall pines grew around it and the deception was complete.  The cliff being twenty-four hundred feet high, the “cabin” must, in reality have been of huge size; but we applied the name “Log-Cabin Cliff” to the place.  At a heavy descent, where the Emma Dean of the first expedition was swamped, we took no chances and made a careful let-down; a little farther on we did the same thing again.  This method of passing a rapid is not romantic, but our object was not to perform spectacular feats but to accomplish the work in hand; so wherever there was any doubt as to the safety of running a rapid we adopted the prudent course.  It was difficult to decide sometimes just where to draw the line; in one rapid we tried to go through, the Nell struck a rock, knocking Thompson out and nearly capsizing, but no real harm was done.  The walls increased to nearly three thousand feet, and the rapids followed each other in quick succession every day.  At one point we saw, a couple of thousand feet above on the right a gigantic example of the natural arches.  Beyond this the walls began to grow somewhat lower.  Our life through this gorge, as well as through some others, might be described by the monotonous phrase, “Got up, ran rapids, went to bed.”  There was no time to do anything else.  At night we were always sleepy and tired.  Fortunately there were here fine places to camp—­plenty of room, with smooth sand to sleep on.  As soon as we halted for the night we would don our dry clothes from the rubber bags, and, when supper was over, would prepare a bed.  If any kind of boughs or willows were to be had, we cut a quantity and, laying them