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Bright Angel trail slipped toward the edge of the chasm. There was no premonition of the sudden drop that sent Miss Trotter skittering down an incline of forty-five degrees. She grabbed frantically at the tail of her beast lest she should slide over its ears, and gave utterance to a little squeak of dismay. To her great relief, the guide appeared not to have heard her. She had a feeling that she did not wish to appear at a disadvantage before the guide.

Down, down, they followed the corkscrew trail, between massive sandstone walls that shut them in and served as a frame for the picture that was revealed beyond. Miss Trotter's first timid fears were forgotten. She gazed in rapt wonder at the scene.

At Cape Horn the guide called a halt. The animals must rest.

"I am glad that you waited until the

day was properly aired before starting out," he said. "There was a party of tourists that came down on the late train last right, intending to go back on the early train this morning. They got up at break of day and prowled about in the chilly dawn; and all they saw for their pains was a view of the lake of mist, dotted with the island-like peaks of buttes that have their foundation a thousand feet or more below-a lake that filled the Canyon from brim to brim.

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"And this," supplemented Miss Trotter, ironically, "is the brand of tourist who, returning, proclaims most vociferously that he has 'seen' the Grand Canyon of the Colorado! Oné meets this abroad. He lives, moves and has his being according to Cook's schedule, which allows fifteen minutes for the inspection of a cathedral, and twenty-four hours or so for the rest of Europe."

"And, sad to say, the kind one meets abroad is, usually, American," the guide smilingly asserted, as he again reined his horse into the trail.

Miss Trotter forgot to be astonished at this further evidence of the guide's intelligence. She was now taking it quite as a matter of course. Perhaps all Western guides were like that.

Three miles of alternate climbing and tobogganing the latter, chiefly-and they reached the floor of the Canyon, a thousand feet below the rim. Still following the trail, which ran nearly straight over the plateau that was bordered on either side by buttes, they came upon a shaded spring, where the horses were glad to tarry. Graceful willows bent above the water that, gushing from the ground, flowed away in loops and curves-a silver ribbon. of a stream.

"It is only within very recent years that the tourist found his way here," said Miss Trotter, instructively, taking a firm hold on the saddle-horn as the burro lowered his head to drink. "Previous to that time the Canyon, so far as the general public is concerned, was still undiscovered."

"And yet," the guide returned with a winning smile, "haven't you a―er-sort of feeling that you may, at any moment, Columbus-like, make some wonderful discovery? Yesterday I was down here, intending to go to the river. I came to a

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The road to Rowe's Point, through the famed Coconino forest.

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He spoke as one having authority; and Miss Trotter, unaccustomed as she was to any man's dominance, meekly subsided.

When they arrived at "the division of the ways," the guide unhesitatingly took the trail to the left. As they neared a huge butte, they saw evidence of man's masonry in the crevices of the sky-piled rocks that towered above the trail.

The guide picketed the animals, and taking the saddle-bags over one arm, offered his hand to Miss Trotter. A breathless scramble of fifty feet, and they stood on a narrow shelf where were two diminutive dwellings.

"There are other worlds to conquer," announced the guide. "Around that shoulder of rock is-The Tavern. Will you try the air-line? With your back to the rock-Don't look down! Now! One, two, three-side-step!"

They rounded the "shoulder," and sank down, laughing, in front of the third, and much larger house. Miss Trotter took off her hat and leaned her head against the wall of the house. The guide emptied the saddle-bags, and arranged the lunch as daintily as any woman.

"I should like," said Miss Trotter, hesitating between a tongue and a cress sandwich, and finally accepting them both, "to stay here at the Canyon for a week or two. There are the Havasupi Indian village, the copper mine, the lime rock caves-oh, ever so many points of interest that I must leave unvisited."

"It would be delightful," the young man agreed. He gazed dreamily at Miss Trotter. Miss Trotter gazed dreamily at the landscape, drenched in the radiance of the sun that now was swinging westward.

"Delightful!" he repeated. Miss Trotter crunched a cracker between her white little teeth.

"I have just been reading how Lieutenant Ives was sent out by the war department in 1857, with instructions to explore the Colorado river as far from its mouth

as navigation should be found practicable," she said, in the "informing" way into which she occasionally lapsed, and which, pedantic in suggestion, came oddly from one so young and attractive. "But so far as we know, the early Spanish explorers were the first to sight the mighty chasm. This was the expedition of 1540, which journeyed from the Moki pueblos northwestward across the desert, obtaining a view of the Canyon, but failing in every attempt to descend its walls."

The guide seemed intensely interested. He hung on Miss Trotter's words, and she, recognizing that here was fertile ground for her seeds of wisdom, proceeded:

"Until forty years ago, the exact course of the Colorado was unknown for many miles, even its origin being a matter of conjecture. It was difficult to approach within a distance of two or three miles from its channel, while descent to the river's edge could only be hazarded at wide intervals, as it lay in an appalling fissure at the foot of seemingly impossible cliff terraces that led down from the bordering plateau; and to tempt its naviga

tion was to court death.

"In 1869 Major J. W. Powell undertook the exploration of the river with nine men and four boats, starting from Green River City in Utah. The project met with the most earnest remonstrance from those who were best acquainted with the region, including the Indians, who maintained that boats could not possibly live in any one of a score of rapids and falls known to them. It was also currently believed that for hundreds of miles the river disappeared wholly beneath the surface of the earth.

"That the idea was erroneous was proved then by Major Powell and two years ago by Ronald Burton, who wrote a thrilling account of his journey-Why do you look at me like that?"

"It is beginning to dawn on me that you may have taken me for some one else," said the young man slowly. "I didn't mention my name to vou at first, becauseer-well, I was rather taken by surprise. And you didn't tell me yours, you know."

"I am Miss Trotter, and I'm on my way to Long Beach, California, to speak on the Spiral in Nature before the Chautauqua Assembly," said the young lady,

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