de Santa Helena. The Mexican boundary surveyors, upon encountering it, were obliged to make a detour of 50 miles around the mountain to approach the river again, where they finally gave up the attempt of further exploration and reached the lower Texas country by a longjourney through Mexico. The canyon profile presents a summit nearly 5,000 feet above the river. The river itself in approaching this mountain first turns from side to side in short stretches, as if trying to avoid the mighty barrier above it, and then, as if realizing that it is constantly becoming involved in the maze of foothills, suddenly starts. across the sierra.

In crossing this mountain the river pursues a tortuous course made of many small rectangular bends, around each of which a new and more surprising panorama is presented. The walls of the canyon are of the same rich cream-colored limestone rocks as those which make the canyons of Santa Helena and San Vincente. Owing to the dislocation of the strata the rocks are more varied in form and are broken into beautiful pointed salients and vertical columns. Wonderful indeed are the remarkable forms of rock sculpture. Among these was a vast cylindrical tower like the imaginary pictures of Babel, standing outward of the cliff line and rising, through perspective, far above. Upon the opposite side was another great Rhine castle. Frequently lonely columns of rock 500 feet or more in height stood out from the front of the cliff in an apparent state of unstable equilibrium. Caverns of gigantic proportions also indented the cliff at many places. Again, the great yellow walls were cut from base to summit by wonderful fissures filled with white calcite or vermilion-colored iron ore. Huge piles of talus here and there encumbered the bases of the cliffs.

The moon was full while we were in this canyon, and the effects of its illuminations were indescribably beautiful. Long before its face could be seen its light would tip the pinnacles and upper strata of the cliffs, still further gilding the natural yellows of the rocks. Slowly this brilliant light sank into the magma of darkness which filled the canyon, gently settling from stratum to stratum as the black shadows. fled before it, until finally it reached the silent but rapid waters of the river, which became a belt of silver. Language can not describe the beauty of such nights, and I could never sleep until the glorious light had ferreted out the shadows from every crevice and driven darkness from the canyon.

After several days our boats suddenly drifted out of the shades and beauties of the Carmen Canyon and emerged into the last of the opendesert basins. As we did so we suddenly came upon a thousand goats, accompanied by their shepherds and dogs, which were drinking at the water's edge. Startled by the unusual appearance of boats, they quickly fled.

In this small desert, known as Stillwells Valley, which is only 10 or 12 miles across, we again see the remarkable alluvial deposits of the Rio Grande rising in wonderful terraces back to the bases of the mountains. The human mind is almost incapable of conceiving the vast quantity of bowlders which in times past have poured out of these vertical canyons into such open plains.

Evidence of animal life, hitherto so rare, now began to appear. A lizard was noted, and two immense ravens, half hopping, half flying, defied us to shoot them. Everywhere along the muddy banks beaver slides were found, and the willows had been cut by them. Three deer

were also seen, while now and then a covey of blue quail scrambled up the stony banks and scattered in the cactus shrub. A mocking bird sang in the thorny bush. Only one who is accustomed to the animal life of the desert can imagine the joy with which we greeted these lowly friends.

Beyond the little Stillwell Desert we entered Temple Canyon. The severity of its walls was frequently broken by ravines, so that at nearly every bend there stood before one a beautifully sculptured mountain, golden in the sunlight, with pinnacled summits and cliffs carved into

Our journey was just half accomplished, and we had crossed to the eastern side of the Cordilleras and were upon the Atlantic slope. The general direction of the river now bent due north, and although the true mountains of folded structure had ceased, the stream continued to be indented to a depth of 2,000 feet or more in canyons of limestone cut out of the great plateau which flanks the eastern side of the Mexican sierra. This lower course is almost a continuous canyon to Del Rio, and from an esthetic point of view is even more picturesque and beautiful than the portion of the river already described.

Beyond Temple Canyon the cliffs recede, leaving a valley from 1 to 5 miles in width between the distant walls. Through a huge gap in these the mouth of Maravillas Creek has been cut. This is a horrible desert arroyo, leading northward for 100 miles or more to Marathon. It has a channel sufficient for the Hudson, but is utterly void of water. Now and then, in the intervals of years, great floods pour down its stony bottom, giving the bowlders and other desert débris a further push toward the Rio Grande and the sea. Such floods, however, are so unusual and sporadic that I have never found a man who knew this stream to run from source to mouth. No profounder testimonial to the slowness of nature's great geological processes can be found than these vast waterless waterways. The mouth of Maravillas Creek marks the end of the great northerly stretch of the Rio Grande, and from there on the algebraic sum of the direction of the river's course is almost due east to the mouth of the Pecos.

Below the mouth of the Maravillas the river continues in a narrow valley between the now more widely separated cliffs of the canyon, which are great buttes and mesas, the dissected fringe of a high limestone plateau above us. These cliffs are cut into many lobes and buttes. Occasionally one of these stands out and apart from the main cliff line in lonely grandeur. Of this nature is Castle Butte, a notable landmark. This rises fully 1,500 feet above the river. Its circular, flat top, the square cut escarpment cornice, and the gracefully sloping pediment are beautiful illustrations of the wonderful symmetrical sculpture seen along the river. These wider vistas are only of brief duration. Soon the rocky walls again approach each other, and the stream resumes its crowded channel between vertical walls, presenting only at rare intervals a place where one can land and find a small spot to camp.

We had now been nearly a month on the river, and the necessities of the occasion forced us to push on as fast as possible. In the steep canyons there had always been a tense feeling of anxiety, accompanied by a longing to escape their dangers as soon as possible. This feeling, as well as our limited commissary, ever drove us onward.

Shortly after making the turn to the east, and in the depths of a