summery things growing even in midwinter, and
where the temperature is almost sultry; and it is an hour or so more to
the riverbed, down at the very bottom. When you finally arrive there
and look up you do not see how you ever got down, for the trail has
magically disappeared; and you feel morally sure you are never going
to get back. If your mule were not under you pensively craning his head
rearward in an effort to bite your leg off, you would almost be ready to
swear the whole thing was an optical illusion, a wondrous dream.
Under these circumstances it is not so strange that some travelers who
have been game enough until now suddenly weaken. Their nerves
capsize and the grit runs out of them like sand out of an overturned
pail.
All over this part of Arizona they tell you the story of the lady from the
southern part of the state--she was a school teacher and the story has
become an epic--who went down Bright Angel one morning and did
not get back until two o'clock the following morning; and then she
came against her will in a litter borne by two tired guides, while two
others walked beside her and held her hands; and she was protesting at
every step that she positively could not and would not go another inch;
and she was as hysterical as a treeful of chickadees; her hat was lost,
and her glasses were gone, and her hair hung down her back, and
altogether she was a mournful sight to see.
Likewise the natives will tell you the tale of a man who made the trip
by crawling round the more sensational corners upon his hands and
knees; and when he got down he took one look up to where, a sheer
mile above him, the rim of the cañon showed, with the tall pine trees
along its edge looking like the hairs upon a caterpillar's back, and he
announced firmly that he wished he might choke if he stirred another
step. Through the miraculous indulgence of a merciful providence he
was down, and that was sufficient for him; he wasn't going to trifle with
his luck. He would stay down until he felt good and rested, and then he
would return to his home in dear old Altoona by some other route. He
was very positive about it. There were two guides along, both of them
patient and forbearing cowpunchers, and they argued with him. They
pointed that there was only one suitable way for him to get out of the
cañon, and that was the way by which he had got into it.
"The trouble with you fellows," said the man, "is that you are too
dad-blamed technical. The point is that I'm here, and here I'm going to
stay."
"But," they told him, "you can't stay here. You'd starve to death like
that poor devil that some prospectors found in that gulch
yonder--turned to dusty bones, with a pack rat's nest in his chest and a
rock under his head. You'd just naturally starve to death."
"There you go again," he said, "importing these trivial foreign matters
into the discussion. Let us confine ourselves to the main issue, which is
that I am not going back. This rock shall fly from its firm base as soon
as I," he said, or words to that effect.
So insisting, he sat down, putting his own firm base against the said
rock, and prepared to become a permanent resident. He was a grown
man and the guides were less gentle with him than they had been with
the lady school teacher. They roped his arms at the elbows and hoisted
him upon a mule and tied his legs together under the mule's belly, and
they brought him out of there like a sack of bran--only he made more
noise than any sack of bran has ever been known to make.
Coming back up out of the Grand Cañon is an even more inspiring and
amazing performance than going down. But by now--anyhow this was
my experience, and they tell me it is the common experience--you are
beginning to get used to the sensation of skirting along the raw and
ragged verge of nothing. Narrow turns where, going down, your hair
pushed your hat off, no longer affright you; you take them
jauntily--almost debonairly. You feel that you are now an old
mountain-scaler, and your soul begins to crave for a trip with a few
more thrills to the square inch in it. You get your wish. You go down
Hermit Trail, which its middle name is thrills; and there you make the
acquaintance of the Hydrophobic Skunk.
The Hydrophobic Skunk is a creature of such surpassing
accomplishments and

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