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

!
 at the thread of water tumbling far be
 low, There. is still plenty of wnc l game in the country more probabl. l than in any area of it's size elsewhere il l America, and on the Mexican side tn | mountain sheep are not at all uncom l mon. They appear to-live in the wall' or the canon and are not often found il 1 the mountains of the interior
 Ten years ago a young English ranch | man named Hood was running cows ou
 on the eastern edge of" the Peninsula.'
 He had the Englishman's exploring in | stinct, and it was excited by the numer- | ous tales of the canon which were ther and are now rife among the Mexican | herdsmen, an imaginative race who 1 work little and talk a great deal. He heard too, of it's glories of clear water l and perpetual gloom and wanted to sec them for himself. In the late summer
 the calves having been branded, the spring shipment made and the screw
 files having vanished, he made prepar- attons for his trip. He went to Gal weston and there had boat built ac-
 cording to his ideas of what would be needed. He had been told of numerous
 NNi'N NN"Niy ldp1do III LiiC Aoiioii, NAiid llS
 wanted strength and stability at the sac
 ritice of speed. He knew that tha cur
 rent of the compressed water would
 carry him along fast enough. The
 boat was made of cedar planlting, half
 an inch thick, screwed to ribs of oak set
 only six inches apart, There was an
 inner skin of the same material, a
 quarter of an inch thick. She was
 thus doublesided. She was 20 feet long
 and 41a feet wide in the mlddl5, nearly
 at-bottomed and with heavy leaden
 keel. Her side.->Were 30 inches high
 and she was the kind of boat that no
 one, or two, or thrse men could turn
 over in the water if they tried For a
 third of her length forward she was
 decked over, and under this covering in
 stormy weather Hood was to sleep. He
 had racks fastened along the sides for
 fishing rods and guns. from which they
 could not be dislodged except by hand.
 and the lockers for his provisions and
 medicines were waterproof, He had
 been told that he would not be able to affect landing anywhere to do his cook
 ing, or to stretch his legs, so he pre- pared for the cooking part of it by hav- ing a square frame, two feet across built upon the bottom of the craft near the stern, and this he filled with asbes- tos. Upon 1t he was to build his fires of a supply of mesquite wood, which he was to take with him A small quanti- ty of mesquite makes an intense heat, with little flame, and will burn a long time.
 Having armed himself with a modern rifle and a shotgun, and got his fishing tackle ready, Hood looked out for some spirit to accompany him, but he could not find any one He had invested nearly $1 900 in the boat and was not willing to lose it, so he resolv e to go alone He set from Fl Paso in September, taking as oars couple of light padles intended to be used for steering. He depended on the current for locomotion Two days afterward he was swept between the gradually rising walls of the upper end of the can on, and thereafter for six weeks dlsap- peared from human view. Near the close of October he came into sight at the lower mouth and foated on down to Eagle Pass, strangely lightened in by long exclusion from the rays of the sun. but fat and happy. l His beat was scared from end to end by rock teeth, and in one place a bit of he planking had been ripped away six nches above the water line, but this | made no difference as the inner skin held fight He had the heads of couple | If mountain sheep With him and large | pile of the ears of the black tail deer, | brought along to prove to his friends | he shooting he had enjoyed. Both of i lis rods had been smashed by giant fish n the turbid waters, but he had caught | plenty of smaller kinds, so many in fact | hat he had grown tired of them He | lad not felt afraid, he said and was
 t no time in grave danger, but it is ! noticeable that six months afterward when some others wished to make the rip and asked him to go along he de- lined promptly. saying that he had
 lad enough. His experiences briefly tated were as follows:
 He noated for a day after entering the anon without trouble and without find- ng a place at which to make a landing. The walls of black rock rose precipt- usly on either side of him and grew teadily taller and narrower, this result lg in noticeable increase in the speed f the current He slept in the boat hat night and about ? o'clock in the lorning was awakened by the craft hooting a rapid It was pitch dark. of purse but he could see the white water leaning about him and it seemed that @ was travelling thousand miles a linute In the light of after experi- 1ces, however, he did not think the fall as a great one and he came through ithout trouble. He stayed awake fter that and in the morning found imsef well within the walls of the anon proper At no time thereafter q he have trouble in making a landing hen he so desired. Almost always rere was a fiat, narrow beach running |, ong the edge of the water and he got out of the boat and alked for a mile, allowing the craft drift along even with him, held by ,pe from it's brow. In places the can I was half mile in width, and i'll
 hers it narrowed to 200 yards. In ese places the current was very fast :, inning, he estimated, at speed of ten
 twelve miles an hour Often the. walls instead of being per 'ndicular would run back from the ater at such an angle that it looked as
 an active man might climb them. ais occurred always in the wider parts