On making an inventory we found that our guns were lost from the boat.  Being too long to go under the hatches, they had been left in the cockpit.  The Defiance had an ugly rap on the bottom, where she struck a rock, the wood being smashed or jammed, but not broken out.  Nearly all material in the two boats was wet, so we took everything out and piled it on a piece of canvas, spread out on the sand.  We worked rapidly, for another storm had been threatening all the morning.

We were engaged in putting up our little tent when a violent wind which swept up the canyon, followed by a downpour of rain interrupted our work; and if anything missed a soaking before, it certainly received it then.  The sand was beaten into our cameras and everything was scattered helter-skelter over the shore.  We were fortunate in only one respect.  The wind was away from the river instead of toward it.  We finally got the tent up, then threw everything into it in an indiscriminate pile, and waited for the storm to pass.  Emery proposed that we do a song and dance just to show how good we felt; but any appearance of merriment was rather forced.

Had the builders of the boats been there, we fear they would have had an uncomfortable half-hour; for nearly all this loss could have been avoided had our instructions regarding the hatch covers been followed.  And for the sake of their saving a few dollars we had to suffer!

The rain soon passed and we went to work, first starting a fire and getting a hurried lunch, for we had not eaten our noon meal, and it was then 4 P.M.  We put up our dark-room tent, then went to work to find what was saved, and what was lost.  We were surprised to find that all our small films and plates had escaped a soaking.  Protected in tin and cardboard boxes, wrapped with adhesive tape, and covered with a coating of paraffine melted and poured over them, they had turned the water in nearly every instance.  The motion-picture film was not so fortunate.  The paraffine had worn off the tin boxes in spots, the water soaked through the tape in some instances, and entered to the film.  One roll, tightly wrapped, became wet on the edges; the gelatine swelled and stuck to the other film, thus sealing the inner portion or picture part of the film, so that roll was saved.

The motion-picture camera was filled with water, mud and sand; and the other cameras fared likewise.  We cleaned them out as best we could, drying them over small alcohol lamp which we had included in our duffle.  Our job seemed endless.  Jimmy had retired early, for he could help us but little in this work.  It rained again in torrents, and the wind howled about the tent.  After midnight, as we still toiled, a land-slide, loosened by the soaking rains, thundered down the mountain side about a fourth of a mile below our camp.  We hoped Jimmy would not hear it.  We retired soon after this.  Smaller slides followed at intervals, descending over the 3000-foot precipices.  Thunder reverberated through the canyon, and altogether it was a night long to be remembered.  These slides made one feel a little uncomfortable.  “It would be most inconvenient,” as we have heard some one say, “to wake in the morning and find ourselves wrapped up in a few tons of earth and rock.”