“We land and stop for an hour or two to examine the fall.  It seems possible to let down with lines, at least part of the way, from point to point, along the right-hand wall.  So we make a portage over the first rocks, and find footing on some boulders below.  Then we let down one of the boats to the end of her line, when she reaches a corner of the projecting rock, to which one of the men clings and steadies her, while I examine an eddy below.  I think we can pass the other boats down by us, and catch them in the eddy.  This is soon done and the men in the boats in the eddy pull us to their side.  On the shore of this little eddy there is about two feet of gravel beach above water.  Standing on this beach, some of the men take a line of the little boat and let it drift down against another projecting angle.  Here is a little shelf on which a man from my boat climbs, and a shorter line is passed to him, and he fastens the boat to the side of the cliff.  Then the second one is let down, bringing the line of the third.  When the second boat is tied up, the two men standing on the beach above spring into the last boat, which is pulled up alongside ours.  Then we let down the boats, for twenty-five or thirty yards, by walking along the shelf, landing them again in the mouth of a side canyon.  Just below this there is another pile of boulders, over which we make another portage.  From the foot of these rocks we can climb to another shelf, forty or fifty feet above the water.  On this bench we camp for the night.  We find a few sticks, which have lodged in the rocks.  It is raining hard, and we have no shelter, but kindle a fire and have our supper.  We sit on the rocks all night, wrapped in our ponchos, getting what sleep we can.”

At this season of the year there is a good deal of cloudy and rainy weather in the Grand Canyon region, and this makes the gorge decidedly gloomy when one is compelled to stay in it and descend the river.  The next morning with two hours of similar manoeuvring the rapid was passed.  The same day they found a stretch where the river was so swift the boats were tossed from side to side like feathers, entirely unmanageable.  Here they met with another rapid and two of the boats were in such a position they could not escape running it.  But they went through without damage.  Then the third crew tried to reach land, and succeeded, only to find that there was no foot-hold.  They pushed out again, to be overwhelmed by a powerful wave which filled the boat full.  She drifted helpless through several breakers and one of these capsized her.  The men hung to the side, the only thing to do in the Colorado unless one has on a life preserver (and even then it is advisable), as she drifted down to the other boats, where she was caught and righted.  It has always seemed strange to me that Powell on this crucial expedition did not provide himself and his men with cork life-jackets, a precaution that suggests itself immediately in such an undertaking.  No one ought ever to attempt a descent without them.