the swift water or “Suck” slackens up in the quieter reach of Flaming Gorge.  In their journeys after beaver the Ashley party had been able to go into this gorge and the two following ones, Horseshoe and Kingfisher, and had doubtless trapped in them.  Here were many beaver, and Ashley drew the inference that as many existed below in the deeper canyon.  Though he had discovered the dangerous character of the river he decided to build boats and set forth on the current in order to trap the canyon, the length of which he did not know and underestimated.  A purpose of reaching St. Louis by this route has been attributed to Ashley, but as Hunt and others some years before understood this to be a stream on whose lower waters Spaniards lived, Ashley doubtless had the same information, and from that he would have known that it was no practicable route to St. Louis.  Beckwourth, who relates the story of the trip,** makes no suggestion of any far-off destination, nor does he say they took their packs along, as they would have done if going to a commercial centre.  It seems to have been purely a trapping expedition, and was probably the very first attempt to navigate Green River.  They took along few provisions, expecting to find beaver plentiful to the end of the canyon, but after a few miles the beaver were absent, and, having preserved none of the meat, the party began to suffer for food.  They were six days without eating, and, the high precipitous walls running ever on and on, they became disheartened, or, in Western phrase, “demoralised,” and proposed to cast lots to find which should make food for the others, a proposition which horrified Ashley, and he begged them to hold out longer, assuring them that the walls must soon break and enable them to escape.  They had not expected so long a gorge.  Red Canyon is twenty-five miles and, with the three above, the unbroken canyon is about thirty-five miles.  Under the circumstances the canyon seemed interminable and the cliffs insurmountable.  The latter grow more precipitous toward the lower end, and scaling would be a difficult feat for a man well fed and strong, though well-nigh hopeless for any weakened by lack of proper food.  At last, however, an opening appeared.  Here they discovered Provo encamped with an abundance of provisions, so their troubles were quickly over.  The opening they had arrived at was probably Brown’s Hole.  There is only one other place that might be called an opening, and this is a small park-like break on the right side of the river, not far above Brown’s Hole, formerly called Little Brown’s Hole and also Ashley Park.  The Ashley men would have had a hard climb to get out of this place, and it is not probable that Provo would have climbed into it, as no beaver existed there.  It seems positive, then, that Ashley came to Provo in Brown’s Hole.  Thus he did not “make his perillous way through Brown’s Hole,” as one author says, because he ended his journey with the beginning of that peaceful