The anxiety attending the resolution to “run” this “fall” was fearful. The lecturer said that he paced up and down a little sand-plot all night without sleeping or resting. In the morning rations were given to the deserters, who determined to watch the fate of the rest of the party. The “run” was successfully made, and it was hoped that the other three would then be induced to follow. This, however, they would not do. On the next day the most difficult point in the entire journey was reached, owing to obstructions caused by lava rocks. In one place a dam was found, the waters rushing over in a cataract. This it was also decided to “run,” on the right hand side. The decision was however reversed when the fearful danger of the attempt was realized. But already one of the boats had been let down to the very head of the fall, where the men were attempting to hold it by winding the rope around a great block of lava. There was one man who had been a whaler—named Bradley—in the boat. The roar of the waters was so deafening that no voice could be heard. At length he was seen to take out his knife with perfect composure, and in an instant he cut the rope, knowing that otherwise the boat would have been dashed to pieces by striking heavily against the wall of the cañon. A moment later, and he and the boat were hurled over the cataract, probably never to be seen again. But a few moments later he appeared a few hundred yards below, waving his hand. All haste was made to reach him, fearing he might be severely bruised, but in the hurry to reach him one of the party (the lecturer) fell overboard and was picked up by this invulnerable old whaler.
On the next day the foot of the Grand Cañon was reached. Thence they went to Virgin River, and from that point to Salt Lake, after which they hastened home.
In conclusion, the lecturer said that if all the sands that had been eroded by the rivers of that region, and washed into the ocean, could be brought into one mass, they would form a rock one mile and a half thick, and bigger than New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania put together.
We all read in the newspapers how, on the day when the Duke of Albany’s lamentable death occurred, M. Jules Ferry, the French Prime Minister and Secretary for Foreign Affairs, gave a dinner party. An Englishman having expressed astonishment that this dinner had not been put off, a Frenchman answered by asking whether Lord Granville would countermand a banquet in case M. Wilson, M. Grévy’s son-in-law, were to die? Our countryman seems to have concluded that Lord Granville would not let his hospitalities be interfered with by M. Wilson’s decease; and perhaps he was right. M. Daniel Wilson holds more effective power than was ever possessed by a Dauphin of France; but his father-in-law is only the chief of a government, not the head of a court, and M. Wilson’s existence has therefore never been brought officially to the cognizance of foreign rulers. It does not follow, however, that because M. Wilson is a private person, the French government is bound to look upon the relations of foreign monarchs as being exactly in the same position as this gentleman. It is more than probable that if Marshal MacMahon were still president, the foreign secretary would not have given a dinner on the day when a child of the Queen of England had died suddenly on French soil. It is equally probable that there would have been no such dinner if M. Thiers or M. Gambetta had been president.