It is a dogged courage of which the author of this book is the serene
possessor--shared equally by his daring brother; and evidence of this
bravery is made plain throughout the following pages. Every youth who
has in him a spark of adventure will kindle with desire to battle his
way also from Green River to the foot of Bright Angel Trail; while
every man whose bones have been stiffened and his breath made short by
the years, will remember wistfully such wild tastes of risk and
conquest that he, too, rejoiced in when he was young.

Whether it deal with the climbing of dangerous peaks, or the descent
(as here) of some fourteen hundred miles of water both mysterious and
ferocious, the well-told tale of a perilous journey, planned with head
and carried through with dauntless persistence, always holds the
attention of its readers and gives them many a thrill. This tale is
very well told. Though it is the third of its kind, it differs from
its predecessors more than enough to hold its own: no previous
explorers have attempted to take moving pictures of the Colorado River
with themselves weltering in its foam. More than this: while the human
race lasts it will be true, that any man who is lucky enough to fix
upon a hard goal and win it, and can in direct and simple words tell
us how he won it, will write a good book.

Perhaps this planet does somewhere else contain a thing like the
Colorado River--but that is no matter; we at any rate in our continent
possess one of nature's very vastest works. After The River and its
tributaries have done with all sight of the upper world, have left
behind the bordering plains and streamed through the various gashes
which their floods have sliced in the mountains that once stopped