's
broad back on his mule and the glorious line of the rim lifting from
opalescent mists."--_Enoch's Diary_.
They had been a week on the trail when they made camp one night at a
spring surrounded by dwarf junipers. Mack, who had taken the trip
before, greeted the spring with a shout of satisfaction.
"Ten miles from the river, boys! To-morrow afternoon should see us
panning gold."
And to-morrow did, indeed, bring the river. There was a wide view of
the Colorado as they approached it. The level which had gradually
lifted during the entire week, making each day cooler, rarer, as it
came, now sloped downward, while mesa and headland grew higher, the way
underfoot more broken, the trail fainter and fainter, and the
thermometer rose steadily.
By now deep fissures appeared in the desert floor, and to the north
lifted great mountains that were banded in multi-colored strata, across
which drifted veils of mist, lavender, blue and gauzy white. Enoch's
heart began to beat heavily. It was the Canyon country, indeed! The
country of enchantment to which his spirit had returned for so many
years.
They ate lunch in a little canyon opening north and south.
"At the north end of this," said Mack, "we make our first sharp drop a
thousand feet straight down.
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