After supper the tourists gathered in a small theatre hall of the hotel (also built of gigantic logs) and were shown a short advertising motion picture about the descent to the bottom of the canyon under the leadership of experienced guides. After the picture there was a concert.

Out on the stage came a fat boy with a banjo. He sat down on the platform and began to pluck the strings of his instrument, pounding away rhythmic taps with his feet in cowboy boots. He looked disdainfully at the public: anyone could see at once that to him only cowboys were human beings and all the others were just trash. After him appeared a tall thin long-nosed cowboy with a guitar. He looked at the public and said :

"Listen, three of us were supposed to sing, but the others aren't coming, I guess, so that I'm going to sing alone. But maybe I shouldn't sing at all. As a matter of fact, I'm no singer anyhow."

He had a handsome, ironic face. In his small black eyes was written:

"Well, now, why play the fool? Hadn't we better go out and have a drink? That would be much more fun. Don't you want to? Well, in that case, I'll sing for you. That's your hard luck!"

The fat boy continued to twang on the banjo. The guitar sounded rather low. The cowboy sang, or rather, talked his little songs, passing occasionally into a Tyrolean falsetto (yodelling). The songs were simple and funny. This is what one of them said:

"When as a boy I swam in the river. Somebody stole the clothes I left folded on the shore. I could not very well go home in the nude, so, while waiting for darkness to fall, I passed the time away cutting my initials on an old apple tree. Many years have passed since then. I found a beautiful girl and married her. Imagine my embarrassment when we went into the bedroom for the first time. My beautiful wife calmly took her artificial teeth out of her mouth and placed them in a glass of water. Then she took off her wig and disclosed her bald head. From her brassiere she took huge wads of cotton. Right before my eyes my beauty was transformed into a scarecrow. But that wasn't all. She then took off her skirt and calmly unscrewed her wooden leg, and on that leg I suddenly saw initials. And the devil take me if they weren't the very same initials which I once cut on the old apple tree when in my childhood somebody stole my clothes."

Everybody laughed, and we joined in. It was very old-fashioned, naive, and funny. The cowboy smiled satirically, as before. And as before, in his eyes gleamed an invitation to go with him somewhere around the corner and down a couple of large glasses of whisky. As to his saying that he couldn't sing, the cowboy lied. He sang well, and he amused us for a long while.

After him a Negro came out. There was no master of ceremonies here, and no one announced the names of the artistes. And they weren't even artistes. All of those who were appearing here were employees of the Grand Canyon. They were giving this concert as an accommodation.

The Negro was extremely young and lanky. His legs seemed to begin at his armpits. He tap-danced with genuine pleasure. His arms swung remarkably in time with his body. He wore trousers on suspenders and a work shirt. After finishing the dance, he gaily picked up a broom that stood in the corner and went away, baring his teeth.

In the morning we saw him near the log cabin in which we slept. He was sweeping up, and he swept with the same pleasure with which he had danced. It even seemed that he was continuing his dance and that the broom was only part of it. He opened his large grey lips and wished us good morning.

We went at once to see the canyon.

Imagine this: You take an immense mountain chain, cut it at the root, turn it upside down and push it into an even land covered with forests. Then you take it out. What remains is the mould of a mountain chain. Its mountains are upside down. That is the Grand Canyon.

Mountains must be looked at from below. The canyon—from the top down. The spectacle of the Grand Canyon does not have its equal anywhere on earth. It did not even resemble anything else on earth. The landscape upset all European concepts about the globe, if one may say so. It looked like some imaginary vision, which might occur to a boy while reading fantastic romances about the moon or Mars. We stood for a long time on the edge of this splendid abyss. We four gossipers did not speak a single word. Far below a bird floated by, slowly, like a fish. Even deeper, almost swallowed by shadows, flowed the Colorado River.

Grand Canyon is a grandiose national park which occupies hundreds of square miles. Like all American national parks (reservations), it is faultlessly organized. Hotels and roads, the distribution of printed and photographic publications, maps, prospectuses, guidebooks, and finally, oral explanations—-all of it is here at a high standard of excellence. Here Americans come with their families to rest, and this rest is not expensive. A cabin in this camp costs no more than in any other, while food costs about the same as anywhere else. For visiting the park, the fee is only one dollar, after which a coloured label is pasted on the automobile windshield and one is free to live and wander throughout this park for a month, even for a year.

Of course, we should have gone down to the bottom of the canyon and lived there for half a year in a log cabin with steam heating, in the midst of the chaos of nature and ideal service, but we did not have the time for that. We did only what we could—drove around the canyon in an automobile.

Suddenly we saw a strange funeral. Down the excellent road of the park slowly moved an automobile bearing a casket. It moved with the speed of a pedestrian. Behind the casket walked people in white leather aprons pinned to ordinary dress-coats. One of them wore a silk top-hat and a morning coat. Some of those who walked behind the casket carried sticks on their shoulders. Behind the procession soundlessly moved more than a score of empty automobiles.

They were burying an old cowboy who had served in the park. The old cowboy had been a Mason, and all these people in white aprons were Masons. The sticks were the sticks of their banner. The funeral was going our way, so we attached ourselves to the end of the column. Out of the forest came a doe and looked in fright at the automobile flock. Hunting is, of course, forbidden in the park, so the doe was not afraid of being shot. But she wanted very much to cross the road. She attempted it several times and jumped back, puzzled by the petrol odour the Masons emitted. Finally, the doe made up her mind, gracefully jumped across the road in front of our car, all her four legs simultaneously leaving the earth, flashed once or twice among the trees, and was lost in the forest.

"Gentlemen," said Mr. Adams, "we must not tarry any longer. We must empty the water out of the radiator and pour into it an anti-freeze mixture. The nights are cold already and the water might freeze. Our radiator will go to the devil. Here in the park we left our machine in a warm garage. But I cannot guarantee that during the next night we shall find anything like that."

In the warm garage of the Grand Canyon we saw somebody's automobile after an accident. Thick branches of trees had broken in through the roof of the large Buick. The motor had pushed itself into the seat of the chauffeur. Inside the machine lay branches and green leaves. The man who had been driving that Buick had fallen asleep at the wheel. That happens in America. The even road, the lulling sway of the machine, the fatigue of the day—and the man, without noticing it himself, falls asleep while driving at a speed of fifty miles an hour. The awakening is almost always frightful. The Buick we saw hit a tree with such force that at the place of the accident one could not tell where the product of General Motors began and where the product of nature ended. Strange as it may " seem, the sleeping driver not only remained alive, but was not even badly hurt. The boy from the garage told us in a respectful manner that he hoped the owner of the machine will henceforth sleep in more safe places than in a moving automobile—in bed, for example. We all looked at Mrs. Adams. Although she never fell asleep while driving, on all our faces was written: "You see?" as if we had already caught our driver snoring at the wheel. We did it anyway, for good measure.