The boats appear not to have been regularly named, though two of them, at least, received titles before long, one, the boat Gilbert was in, being called the Trilobite, and the other, the photographic boat, was termed the Picture.  Leaving Mohave on September l6th (1871) they proceeded with little difficulty by towing and rowing, as far as Ives had taken the Explorer, to the foot of Black Canyon.  From here the work was harder, but by the l8th they had arrived in the heart of this canyon.  The rapids were now more severe, but as Ives had gone up easily, and also Johnson with his steamboat, and Rodgers with his, there was nothing to prevent the ascent of this party.  On the tenth day, therefore, they passed Fortification Rock and reached Las Vegas Wash, the termination of the Ives exploration.  From here to the mouth of the Virgen was the stretch that had, technically, never been explored, though it had been traversed, at least, several times.  There is one small canyon in the distance, called Boulder.  Passing the mouth of the Virgen, Wheeler entered the canyon through the Virgen Mountains, and this he named Virgin Canyon because, as he says, it was his “first canyon on entirely new ground.”  I am at a loss to understand his meaning.  If he intended to convey the impression that he was the first to traverse this portion, it is an unwarranted assumption, and must be emphatically condemned.  Powell had descended as far as the Virgen, and thus Wheeler was simply following his course backwards.

Passing through another small unnamed canyon, to which he applied the term Iceberg on account of the contour of its northern walls, he finally, on October 3d, came to the Grand Wash.  On the next day the Ute Crossing near the beginning of the Grand Canyon was reached.  Two or three days before this he could see what seemed to be a high range of mountains apparently perpendicular, which was, as he surmised, the foot of the Grand Canyon.  Progress was now very slow, for the river was swifter than it had been below.  Perceiving the impossibility of taking such a craft farther, the barge was left behind at the Crossing, to form a base of supplies in case the difficulties of ascending necessitated falling back.  Relief parties from the rendezvous at Truxton Springs were to go, one to the mouth of the canyon and the other to the mouth of Diamond Creek, about thirty-five miles distant from the Springs, but the situation was complicated by these parties having no orders to wait at these points.  Putting all of his land force who were at the canyon mouth on the south side of “this turbid, unmanageable stream,” and picking three crews of nine persons each, with rations for fifteen days, he was ready to go ahead with this unwise enterprise, “imagining,” as he admits, “but few of the many difficulties that were to be met.”  It was on October 7th that they entered the mouth of the great gorge.  At length “a full view, magnificent beyond description, of the walls of the