The rapid was small and swift, a mere chute, and perhaps hardly worthy of mention had it not been the point where the character of the river current changes making it distinguished because of being the first of hundreds to come below.

The river above had held a continual descent accelerating here and retarding there with an average current of two and a half miles an hour, but here began the quick drops for which the canyons are now famous.

There was one place where Prof.
noted a small rapid but it was not like this one, and I did not count it at all.
[Illustration: Horseshoe Canyon.
Photograph by E.O.Beaman, 1871.] The gorge we ran into so suddenly was short and by dinner-time we had emerged into a wider, more broken place, though we were still bound in by tremendous heights.

We saw that we had described a complete horseshoe and this fact determined the canyon's name--number two of the series.
When we landed for dinner, an examination was made of the locality from that base before we dropped down a little distance to the mouth of a fine clear creek coming in from the right.

This was a fascinating place.
The great slopes were clothed with verdure and trees, and the creek ran through luxuriant vegetation.