Hermit Basin. Here, after lunch, one continues on his trail trip to the river. For three miles the trail winds in and out of the recesses, on the easily rolling ground of the plateau. There are no sharp descents. For about half a mile the trail is in Dripping Spring Amphitheatre, an alcove on the edge of Hermit Basin, so named by Louis P. Brown, a miner and prospector, who, in the early eighties, made this basin his home while engaged in prospecting operations in the Canyon.

As the plateau passes across the basin and out to the open Canyon, the scene becomes more and more enlarged, until it is stupendous and vast beyond description. Down on the right, Hermit Creek cuts its narrow path deeper and deeper, until it reaches the red-wall limestone, where it makes a narrow gorge, that, from the elevation of the plateau, seems more like a mere slit in the rock than a gorge. Louis Boucher assures me that it is so narrow and deep that he has seen stars from its recesses at midday, and I record his statement in spite of the fact that eminent astronomers have told me that such a sight is impossible. Anyhow, the effect of that stupendous descent is such as to almost make the rider on the trail see stars, though there is no danger to any one with ordinarily steady nerves. Two miles out, one sees the continuation of one arm of the Bright Angel fault in the shattered strata of the red sandstone, some masses of which are toppled over at the base of Pima Point. It was this fault that made the talus slopes, down which the Boucher Trail descends, and also the great eroded recess of Hermit Basin.