We proceeded as best we could with all caution.  Every move was planned and carried out with the exactness of a battle; as if the falls were actual enemies striving to discover our weakness.  One practice was to throw sticks in above them, and thus ascertain the trend of the chief currents, which enabled us to approach intelligently.  The river here was not more than four hundred feet wide.  As we continued, the canyon finally widened, and at one place there was a broad, rocky beach on the left.  The opposite wall was nearly three thousand feet high.  Beaman, by setting his camera far back on the rocks, was able to get a view to the top, with us in it by the river, while we were trying to work the boats past a rapid.  This photograph is reproduced on this page {285}, and the figures, though very small, may be plainly seen.  Not far below this the walls closed in again.  Powell and Thompson tried to climb out, but they failed on the first trial and had no time to make a fresh start.  They came back to camp and as soon as an early supper was over we started on—­about five o’clock.  The walls ran close together and at the water were perfectly vertical for a hundred feet or so, then there was a terrace.  As we sailed down, the river was suddenly studded with pinnacles of rock, huge boulders or masses fallen from the heights.  By steering carefully we could pass among these and, keeping in the dividing line of the current, make for the head of a rocky island, on each side of which the waters plunged against the cliffs with great force as they dropped away to a lower level.  The danger lay in getting too far over either way, and it was somewhat difficult to dodge the pinnacles and steer for the island at the same time.  The Canonita went on the wrong side of one, and we held our breath, for it seemed as if she could not retrieve her position in the dividing current, but she did.  As we approached the head of the island our keel bumped several times on the rocks, while the current changed from the simple dividing line and ran everywhere.  At length we reached the shallow water, and as the keel struck gently on a rock we were overboard, soon pulling the boat on the island, where the others quickly followed.  By hauling the craft down the right-hand side for about half the island’s length, we were able to pull directly across the tail of waves from the right-hand rapid, and avoid being swept against the cliff on the left where the whole river set.  So close did every boat go that the oars on that side could not be used for a moment or two; and then we were past.  At a higher stage of water this place would be much simpler.  The river became serene; night was falling; we drifted on with the current till a roar issuing from the darkness ahead admonished us to halt.  Some broken rocks on the right gave a footing and there we remained till morning.  In the night it rained, and the rain continued into the daylight till cascades came leaping and plunging from everywhere into the canyon.  Two of these