only to fall in love with a mule, and to learn what a sure-footed,
careful, and docile creature, when he is on his good behavior, a
mule can be. My mule was named "Johnny," and there was soon a good
understanding between us. I quickly learned to turn the whole
problem of that perilous descent over to him. He knew how to take
the sharp turns and narrow shelves of that steep zigzag much better
than I did. I do not fancy that the thought of my safety was
"Johnny's" guiding star; his solicitude struck nearer home than
that. There was much ice and snow on the upper part of the trail,
and only those slender little legs of "Johnny's" stood between me
and a tumble of two or three thousand feet. How cautiously he felt
his way with his round little feet, as, with lowered head, he seemed
to be scanning the trail critically! Only when he swung around the
sharp elbows of the trail did his forefeet come near the edge of the
brink. Only once or twice at such times, as we hung for a breath
above the terrible incline, did I feel a slight shudder. One of my
companions, who had never before been upon an animal's back, so fell
in love with her "Sandy" that she longed for a trunk big enough in
which to take him home with her.

It was more than worth while to make the descent to traverse that
Cambrian plateau, which from the rim is seen to flow out from the
base of the enormous cliffs to the brink of the inner chasm, looking
like some soft, lavender-colored carpet or rug. I had never seen the
Cambrian rocks, the lowest of the stratified formations, nor set my
foot upon Cambrian soil. Hence a new experience was promised me.
Rocky layers probably two or three miles thick had been worn away
from the old Cambrian foundations, and when I looked down upon that
gently undulating plateau, the thought of the eternity of time which
it represented tended quite as much to make me dizzy as did the drop