We began our work the next morning where we left off the night before by bringing the remaining boat down along the edge of the “Triplets.”  Then, while Emery cooked the breakfast, Jimmy and I “broke camp.”  The beds came first.  The air had been released from the mattresses before we got up,—­one way of saving time.  A change of dry clothing was placed with each bed, and they were rolled as tightly as the two of us could do it, after which they were strapped, placed in a rubber sack, with a canvas sack over that, both these sacks being laced at the top.  The tent—­one of those so-called balloon silk compositions—­made a very small roll; the dark-room tent, with its three plies of cloth, made the largest bundle of the lot.  Everything had been taken from the boats, and made quite a pile of dunnage, when it was all collected in a pile ready for loading.  After the dishes were washed they were packed in a box, the smoke-covered pots and pans being placed in a sack.  Everything was sorted and piled before the loading commenced.  An equal division of nearly everything was made, so that the loss of one boat and its cargo would only partially cripple the expedition.  The photographic plates and films, in protecting canvas sacks, were first disposed of, being stored in the tin-lined hatches in the bow of the boats.  Two of the smaller rolls containing bedding, or clothing; a sack of flour, and half of the cameras completed the loads for the forward compartments.  Five or six tin and wooden boxes, filled with provisions, went into the large compartments under the stern.  A box containing tools and hardware for the inevitable repairs, and the weightier provisions—­such as canned milk and canned meats—­went in first.  This served as ballast for the boats.  Then the other provisions followed, the remaining rolls of bedding and tents being squeezed in on top.  This compartment, with careful packing, would hold as much as two ordinary-sized trunks, but squeezing it all in through the small hatchway, or opening on top, was not an easy job.  One thing we guarded very carefully from this time on was a waterproofed sack containing sugar.  The muddy water had entered the top of this sack in our upset, and a liquefied sugar, or brown-coloured syrup, was used in our coffee and on our breakfast foods after that.  It gradually dried out, and our emptied cups would contain a sediment of mud in the bottom.

Such was our morning routine, although it was not often that everything was taken from the boats, and it only happened in this case because we made a portage the night before.

Our work was all undone an hour later, when we came to the sharp descent known as Hell’s Half Mile, A section of a cliff had fallen from above, and was shattered into a hundred fragments, large and small; gigantic rocks were scattered on both shores and through the river bed, not an orderly array of rocks such as that found at Ashley Falls, but a riotous mass, looking as though they had been hurled from the sky above.  The stripped trunk of an eight-foot tree, with roots extending over the river, had been deposited by a recent flood on top of the principal barrier.  All this was found about fifty yards below the beginning of the most violent descent in Lodore Canyon.  It would have been difficult enough without this last complication; the barrier seemed next to insurmountable, tired and handicapped with heavy boats as we were.