In this locality there seemed to be no possibility of a man's finding a way to the summit.

I concluded that at high water this part of Cataract Canyon would probably annihilate any human being venturing into it, though it is possible high water would make it easier.

Where there was driftwood it was in tremendous piles, wedged together in inextricable confusion; hundreds of tree-trunks, large and small, battered and cut and limbless, with the ends pounded into a spongy lot of splinters.

The interstices between the large logs were filled with smaller stuff, like boughs, railroad-ties, and pieces of dressed timber which had been swept away from the region above the Union Pacific Railway.

Picture this narrow canyon twenty-seven hundred feet deep, at high water, with a muddy booming torrent at its bottom, sweeping along logs and all kinds of floating debris, and then think of being in there with a boat! We proceeded as best we could with all caution.