The books in this section are usually hardcover and in decent condition, though we'll sometimes offer hard-to-find books in lesser condition at a reduced price. Though we often put images of the book with their original dust jackets, the copies here won't always (or even often) have them. If that is important to you, please call ahead or say so in the order comments!
The river was like a wild beast, growling low in its throat and waiting to spring. Around each mysterious bend might lie perilous rapids. The four little boats, exploring for the first time the canyons of the Green and Colorado Rivers, were tossed like matches on the leaping waters. Then catastrophe overtook the craft containing some of their most precious equipment:
The boat jumped a low falls, sped through the churning water beneath it, and struck a great boulder that flung its prow to the sky. . . . The three men were borne along like chips in the foaming tide, and it seemed only a matter of seconds before they would be either drowned or pounded to death on the jutting rocks . . .
Such is the mood and the suspense of this true narrative of the John Wesley Powell expedition through the Grand Canyon in the spring and summer of 1869. Here, in the wildest of the West, ten intrepid men with rations for ten months prepared to run the unknown canyon in four stout rowboats, making scientific observations all the way.
Icy nights, blistering days, cataracts, sandstorms, and murderous Indians lay ahead in a canyon so deep that sometimes the sky was only a slit of light above their heads. But there was beauty too, and moments as thrilling as they were dangerous as they swirled down America's most awe-inspiring gorge. Their story is superbly told by that master of adventure, James Ramsey Ullman.
—from the dust jacket
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