beautifully terraced canyon, we came upon another copious hot spring running out of the bluff upon a low bench, where it made a large, clear pool of water. We reached this place one Sunday noon. The sight of this natural bath of warm water was tempting to tired and dirty men, and here we made our first and only stop for recreation. After lunch most of the party proceeded to the warm pool, and, stripping, we literally soaked for hours in its delightful waters, stopping occasionally to soap and scrub our linen. While here the party indulged in guessing the height of the inclosing cliffs. The air was so clear in this country that one always underestimated the magnitude of the relief. None of our estimates exceeded 500 feet. Seeing a good place for the first time in all our course to scale the canyon walls, I climbed them and measured the exact height, which was 1,650 feet. The view from the summit was superb, revealing the panorama of the uplands, which is completely shut out while traversing the chasm below.

In the eastern course of the river the rock forms and sculpture become more varied, and one is constantly surprised by new types of sculpture and scenery. For miles we passed through a perpendicular canyon, the cliffs of which were serrated by rough and cavernous indentations and great vertical seams, between which the ledges were molded into ragged forms like the Bad Lands of Dakota. Below this, in another canyon, the sculpture is marked by queer, eccentric pinnacles projecting above the ragged sky line-spires, fingers, needles, natural bridges, and every conceivable form of peaked and curved rocks.

About the center of the eastern stretch of the river the altitudes of the canyon walls decrease slowly and almost imperceptibly until the river completely surmounts the great limestone formation which has been the chief matrix of its prison walls. These walls, to their termination, lock in the river securely from approach. In this eastern stretch the immediate gorge of the river is generally a canyon within a canyon. Within a double canyon of this type MacMahon had once been caught by a flood. He endeavored to escape to the uplands in order to make his way to the railway. After three days of attempt he finally reached the summit of the immediate canyon only to find another wall, invisible from the river, which it was utterly impossible to surmount. Fortunately the river had meanwhile subsided and he escaped by resuming his boats.

There is a break in the continuity of the canyon near where the river crosses the one hundred and second meridian. This interruption is only a short one, for the stream soon begins to descend again into a rock-bound trough. In this portion, and as far east as the mouth of Devils River, some of the most beautiful and picturesque effects are found. The walls are no longer of orange color, but are of chalky limestone of purest white, which weathers into great curves rather than vertical ledges. In one canyon, for instance, the walls are carved into the most remarkable perpendicular pillars, resembling columns of the Egyptian type, each of which is over 100 feet in height. Unfortunately the kodak films were exhausted and the glass plates failed to receive the impression of this artistic scene. In other places the river has gradually undermined a channel far beneath a great ledge of overhanging limestone, the summit of which projected as smooth, slanting gables overhanging the stream, under which we sailed for hours.

Beautiful as were these canyons, and prolific as they were in game

and in caves of wild honey, the hardships we had endured were telling upon the temper of the party, and we no longer appreciated the noble surroundings. We longed only to escape from the walls, upon which we now began to look as a prison. Ten hours of hard rowing each day, everyone of which was burdened with the additional labor of dragging the boats over dangerous rapids, constant wetting by wading and ducking, the baking due to a merciless sunshine, the restricted diet, made no better by Serafino's ignorance of hygienic cooking and Shorty's constant additions of bacon grease to every article, together with the ever-present apprehension of danger, had put us all in a condition of quarrelsome, nervous tension, which is a dangerous state in camp, no matter how friendly all may be, and it was with pleasure that we finally sighted a longed-for landmark indicating a point where we could abandon the river.

Opposite the village of Langtry, near the top of a vertical cliff some 300 feet high, is a small bluff cavern. Poised on the edge of this inaccessible cavern is a huge pile of sticks skillfully entwined into what is perhaps the largest birds' nest in America. Since the trans-Pecos country was first known this nest has been a landmark, and until lately was inhabited by a pair of eagles which here annually brought forth their young. A few years since, however, a company of colored soldiers were stationed near this place, and, with the instinct which prompts men to shoot at every living thing, they killed the birds which even the hardened frontiersmen had long protected.

We landed the contents of our boats upon a little beach opposite this nest. A messenger proceeded a mile and a half to the village of Langtry and secured a pack horse, which conveyed our belongings to the railway station. It was gratifying to see once more even the crudest habitation of man. We were received by a famous old frontiersman, whose hospitable house is decorated with a peculiar sign, reading:

Law West of the Pecos.

ROY BEAN,

Justice of the Peace and Notary Public.

San Antonio Lager Beer.

We had hardly reached the railway track when we became aware of the fact that civilization's dangers are sometimes greater than those of nature. A locomotive whistle was heard in the distance, the first time that sound had greeted our ears for over a month. From the fact that this whistling continued fully five minutes we understood that it was a signal of distress, and that a train had become derailed somewhere on the wild and desert prairies. Soon a hand car appeared. An appeal for medical assistance was made, and my party, with its small first-aid-to-the-injured outfit, was conveyed some 5 miles out into the desert, where a huge freight train, pulled by two gigantic locomotives and laden with rich goods for the Orient, had jumped the track and tumbled into a chaotic pile. All night long we attended to the injured and the dead, and it was 3 o'clock the next morning when we dragged our weary steps over the miles of cactus back to the village, threw ourselves upon the railway platform, and for the first time within a month we slept away from the roar of the river and

free from the oppressive fear of danger which had ever haunted us within its confining walls.

We had successfully navigated and mapped 350 miles of a portion of one of America's greatest rivers, which hitherto had been considered impassable; we had made a geologic section directly across the eastern sierra of the great American Cordilleras from the interior deserts to the coastal plain, procuring light upon some of our leastknown country; we had escaped dangers which had overwhelmed those who had attempted the canyons before, and our little party dispersed contented with its success.