The same day on which they entered the granite they arrived, after running, and portaging around, several bad rapids, at a terrific fall, announced by a loud roar like the steady boom of Niagara, reverberating back and forth from wall to wall, and filling the whole gorge with its ominous note.

The river was beaten to a solid sheet of reeling foam for a third of a mile.

There was but one choice, but one path for the boats, and that lay through the midst of it, for on each side the waves pounded violently against the jagged cliffs which so closely hemmed them in.

Men might climb up to the top of the granite and find their way around the obstruction, one thousand feet above it, descending again a mile or two down, but they could not take the boats over such a road.

They must, therefore, run the place, a fall of about eighty feet in the third of a mile, or give up the descent.