rd of White's story is in Report of Surveys for a
Railway across the Continent by Wm. J. Palmer, 1868. Dr. C. C. Parry was
assistant geologist of the Survey.

"They felt the raft agitated, then whirled along with frightful
rapidity towards a wall that seemed to bar all further progress. As they
approached the cliff the river made a sharp bend, around which the raft
swept, disclosing to them, in a long vista, the water lashed into foam,
as it poured through a narrow precipitous gorge, caused by huge masses
of rock detached from the main walls. There was no time to think. The
logs strained as if they would break their fastenings. The waves dashed
around the men, and the raft was buried in the seething waters. White
clung to the logs with the grip of death. His comrade stood up for an
instant with the pole in his hands, as if to guide the raft from the
rocks against which it was plunging; but he had scarcely straightened
before the raft seemed to leap down a chasm and, amid the deafening roar
of waters, White heard a shriek that thrilled him to the heart, and,
looking around, saw, through the mist and spray, the form of his comrade
tossed for an instant on the water, then sinking out of sight in a
whirlpool."

On the fifth day White lashed himself to the raft. He then describes a
succession of rapids, passing which with great difficulty he reached a
stream that he afterward learned was the Little Colorado. He said the
canyon was like that of the San Juan, but they are totally different.
The current of this stream swept across that of the Colorado, "causing
in a black chasm on the opposite bank a large and dangerous whirlpool."
He could not avoid this and was swept by the cross current into this
awful place, which, to relieve the reader's anxiety, I hasten to add,
does not exist. There is no whirlpool whatever at the mouth of the
Little Colorado, nor any other danger. But White now felt that further
exertion was useless, and amidst the "gurgling" waters closed his eyes
for some minutes, when, feeling a strange swinging sensation, he opened
them and found that he was circling round the whirlpool, sometimes close
to the terrible vortex, etc. He thought he fainted. He was nothing if
not dramatic. When he recovered it was night. Then for the first time he
thought of prayer. "I spoke as if from my very soul, and said: 'Oh, God,
if there is a way out of this fearful place, show it to me, take me to
it.'" His narrator says Whit