Just as we were passing out of sight the
poor creatures neighed pitifully after us, and one who has never heard
the last despairing, pleading neigh of a horse left to die can form no
idea of its almost human appeal. We both burst into tears, but it was no
use, to try to save them we must run the danger of sacrificing
ourselves, and the little party we were trying so hard to save.
We found the little mule stopped by a still higher precipice or
perpendicular rise of fully ten feet. Our hearts sank within us and we
said that we should return to our friends as we went away, with our
knapsacks on our backs, and the hope grew very small. The little mule
was nipping some stray blades of grass and as we came in sight she
looked around to us and then up the steep rocks before her with such a
knowing, intelligent look of confidence, that it gave us new courage. It
was a strange wild place. The north wall of the canon leaned far over
the channel, overhanging considerably, while the south wall sloped back
about the same, making the wall nearly parallel, and like a huge crevice
descending into the mountain from above in a sloping direction.
We decided to try to get the confident little mule over this
obstruction, Gathering all the loose rocks we could we piled them up
against the south wall, beginning some distance below, putting up all
those in the bed of the stream and throwing down others from narrow
shelves above we built a sort of inclined plane along the walls
gradually rising till we were nearly as high as the crest of the fall.
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