The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-09-07

l PohiSu at lIlCalculdDle speed, anu dt iI' | bottom was a pool of unknown deptf
 that was two hundred yards in diane l ter and covered from side to side Wltl
 foam two feet in thickness. He spur
 around in this pool for an hour after 1 striking it before with his little paddle I he could force his heavy boat out or Il and into the stream which settled lntc
 the river below. The noise Of this ano | many other rapids penned in by the enormous, reverberating walls was ter | rible. He could hear the rapids roar l sometimes for two miles before he | reached them, and their neighborhood was always determinable not only by the uproar, but by the quickening sWirls of water about the boat and the increased speed. Of course. as it was his first voyage, he had never any
 Knowledge of what was ahead of nm.
 It might be merely long and easy de-
 cline upon smooth surface, or cata-
 ract with the precipitancy of Niagara.
 It was his custom when approaching d
 rapid to lie down on his back, grasp a
 gunrack to hold himself steady, stare
 straight upward at the rift far aboVe
 him and 'let her float" He could feel
 the boat bucking like maddened horse
 or Whirling around and around with
 dizzying velocity while it plunged
 downward, but he knew that he could
 not do anything to guide it or to assist
 or to retard it's progress. He had paid
 six hundred dollars for it, had conf
 dence in it's strength and trusted a good
 deal to fortune. The result proved
 that he acted wisely. He was nothing
 of boatman, and, if he had attempted
 to direct matters, must infallibly nave
 drowned long before reaching the can
 on's mouth If that had happened,
 nothing would have been seen of him.
 is fact that no bIodies of animals of
 any kind have ever come out of the
 canon. The explanation is that they are ground to pieces in the rapids
 Finding that he could make landings at pleasure, Hood travelled only by day light. He did not wish to repeat his first nights experience of shooting a
 rapid in the dark. He caught many bass and perch, but did not know the names of the large fish which broke his rods. Probably they were gars. The water was always beautifully clear. It was cold and would average twenty feet in depth Some of the pools were bottomless and again there were long shallow reaches, save for narrow channel just deep enough to allow the passage of his boat. During all his six weeks of loafing and oating he did not see sign of humanity nor hear a hu man voice. He was as utterly alone as if upon an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. He saw several brown and two cinnamon bears and shot at them, but they were long way up and trotted away.
 Hood knew nothing of beavers, and a thought of them had not entered his head. He said, however, when ques- toned, that in one or two places where the water was shallow near a flat beach just below bend he saw queer con- made of mud and driftwood which had something the appearance of nests. Old trappers here had been con vlnced of the existence of beavers in the canon by the fact that ,driftwood which had been cut by teeth often came loWn the river The presence of the an- mals was demonstrated in strange way two years after the Hood explora- ion. There appeared in Eagle Pass in he spring of 1891 a French Canadian yho gave the name of Bauduy. He anne padding swiftly down the river in boat bull. much like canoe. He anded first in the town but almost i'm nediately re-entered his craft and < rossed to Piedras Negras on the other i
 idle, q city now known as Ciudad Por- | irio Diaz. His hair was down upon is shoulders, his clothing was in rags. lis Winchester carbine was red with | ust from end to end and unloaded. He ! lad with him three hundred beaver | kins and one steel trap of the ordinary \ pattern pattern. He sold his skins | for four dollars each, and as he British consul seemed disposed to | make inquiries about him, he disap- | cared into the interior of Mexico and as not since been heard from Before oing, however he told this story
 He and his two companions named llphonse Pichot and Edouard Biossat, rappers all while in western Canada, card of the Rio Grande canon, and re- olved to try 1t. They went to El Paso, uild three small, strong boats, loaded hem with supplies, weapons and traps nd drifted down the river. This was l November, and they intended to pend the winter in the canon Blos- ats boat was overturned and he was roWued in the first fall. The next ay Bauduy and Pichot made camp on
 narrow shore. just above a deep pool, nd set their traps. They were success Il, but exhausted the neighborhood in lree weeks and moved on downward hey passed other rapids in safety un- point was reached which Bauduy timated to be about half way through ,e canon. Here they struck a fierce lll In attempting to shoot it Pichot, ho was standing in his boat, lost his dance, fell out and was drowned The ,at was ground to pieces on the rocks ,low Luckily all of the skins they ,d taken were in Bauduy's boat The lrvivor worked his way on down dur 2 the ensuing months, setting the aps sometimes with success and not. He would have stayed Id taken more skins he said, but for Q fact that after a while his loneliness CIV to be unbearable. The waals of e canon, where it was nearly always , rk, seemed to be closing in on him to ush him, so he gave it up and floated vay.
 No man has been through the canon