canyons entering at one point, to which the name Trinalcove was given, as they appeared from the river like alcoves rather than canyons.  The river was now very winding with walls frequently vertical.  There were no rapids, though the water as a rule moved somewhat swiftly.  The days were growing short, and the night air had an autumnal chill about it that made the camp-fire comforting.  At the end of sixty-two miles the walls broke up into buttes and pinnacles, thousands of them, suggesting immense organs, cathedrals, and almost anything the imagination pictured.  One resembling a mighty cross lying down was in consequence called the “Butte of the Cross."* This was practically the end of Labyrinth Canyon, and sweeping around a beautiful bend, where the rocks again began to come together, we were in the beginning of the next canyon of the series, two years before named Stillwater.  At the suggestion of Beaman, the bend was called Bonito.  On leaving our camp at this place the walls rapidly ran up, the current grew swifter, but the river remained smooth.  The canyon was exceedingly “close,” the rocks rising vertically from the edge of the water.  There were few places where a landing could be made, but luckily no landing was necessary, except for night.  The darkness fell before we found a suitable camp-ground.  Some of our supplies had now to be used with caution, for it became evident that we would run short of food before we could get any more.

* Actually a pinnacle and a butte—­not a single mass.{See page 275}.

Long ago, no one knows how long, we might have been able to purchase of the natives who, a few miles below this camp, had tilled a small piece of arable land in an alcove.  Small huts for storage were found there in the cliffs, and on a promontory, about thirty feet above the water, were the ruins of stone buildings, one of which, twelve by twenty feet in dimensions, had walls still standing about six feet high.  The canyon here was some six hundred feet wide; the walls about nine hundred feet high, though the top of the plateau through which the canyon is carved is at least fifteen hundred feet above the river.  We discovered the trail by which the old Puebloans had made their way in and out.  Where necessity called for it, poles and tree-trunks had been placed against the rocks to aid the climbers.  Some of our party trusted themselves to these ancient ladders, and with the aid of a rope also, reached the summit.

Beyond this place of ruins, the river flowed between walls not over four hundred and fifty feet apart at the top.  The current was about three miles an hour, with scarcely a ripple, though it appeared much swifter because of the nearness of the cliffs.  At the end of seven miles of winding canyon, there came a sharp turn to the east, which brought into view, at the other end, another canyon of nearly equal proportions and similar appearance.  In the bottom of this flowed a river of almost the same size as