The surveyors had to carry with them, on their backs, for a great portion of the way, the limited supplies of food they took with them, because it was frequently impossible to get the boats along at all.  When the boats were used, several were upset, and everything was uncertainty as to the bill of fare that would be presented at the next meal, even if there was to be a meal at all.  Mr. Frank M. Brown, president of the railroad company, lost his life in one of the whirlpools.  He was in a boat, a little ahead of the others, and seemed to be cheerful and hopeful.  He shouted to his comrades in the rear to come on with their boats, and that he was all right.  A moment later, his friends were astonished to see the boat gone, and their leader swimming around and around in a whirlpool, trying hard to reach smooth water.

He was a good swimmer, and a brave man, but his efforts were futile, and finally he sank.  The party waited and watched for hours, but were finally compelled to recognize the fact that their friend and leader was gone forever.

It was determined almost immediately to beat a retreat.  While the party was hunting for a side canon leading northward through which they could make their exit, it became evident that a storm was brewing.  Rain commenced to fall in a steady shower, and to increase in quantity.  The surveyors had no dry clothing beyond what they stood up in, and there was no shelter of any kind at hand.  They were near Vassey’s Paradise, in the deepest part of the canon they had yet reached.  A storm in such a location had its awfulness intensified beyond measure, and the frightened men looked in every direction for shelter.  Finally, about forty feet up the side of the marble cliff, the opening to a small cavern was seen.  Into this Mr. R. B. Stanton, one of the party, climbed.  There was not room enough for his body at full length, but he crawled in as best he could, curled himself up, and tried to sleep.

A terrible night followed.  At about midnight he was awakened by a terrific peal of thunder, which re-echoed and reverberated through the canon in a most magnificently awful manner.  He had been caught in storms in mountain regions and deep valleys before, but he had never felt so terribly alone or so superstitiously alarmed as on this occasion.  Every now and then a vivid flash of lightning would light up the dark recesses of the gorge, casting ghastly shadows upon the cliffs, hill sides, ravines and river.  Then again there would be the darkness which, as Milton puts it, could be felt, and the feeling of solitude was almost intolerable.

The river in the meantime had swollen into a torrent, by the drenching rain, which had converted every creek into a river, and every feeder of the Colorado into a magnificent, if raging, river itself.  The noise caused by the excited river, as it leaped over the massive rocks along its bed, vied with the thunder, and the echoes seemed to extend hundreds of miles in every direction.  What affected the stranded traveler the most was the noise overhead, the reverberation inducing a feeling of alarm that huge masses of rock were being displaced from their lofty eminence thousands of feet above his head, and were rushing down upon him.