lete the portage around the
double fall so that night again compelled them to camp near its spray,
this time on a sand bank at the foot of the lower descent. Here, half
buried in the gravel of the beach, some objects were discovered
which revealed the fact that some other party had suffered a similar
disastrous experience. These were an iron bake-oven, several tin plates,
fragments of a boat, and other indications of a wreck at this place long
years before. In his report, Powell ascribes this wreck to Ashley, but
this is a mistake, for Ashley seems never to have entered this canyon,
ending his voyage, as I have previously stated, when he reached Brown's
Park. This wreckage then was from some other and later party. Powell
also states that Ashley and one other survivor succeeded in reaching
Salt Lake, where they were fed and clothed by the Mormons and employed
on the Temple foundation until they had earned enough to enable them to
leave the country. These men could not have been Ashley and a companion,
for several reasons: one cited above; another that the Mormons had not
yet settled at Salt Lake in Ashley's day; and a third, that Ashley was
a wealthy and distinguished man, and would not have required pecuniary
help. The disaster recorded by the bake-oven, etc., must then have
occurred after 1847, the year the Mormons went into the Salt Lake
Valley. Possibly it may have been the party mentioned by Farnham in
1839, though this would not be true if the men found Mormons at Salt
Lake. An old mountaineer, named Baker, once told Powell of a party of
men starting down the river and named Ashley as one, and this story,
which referred undoubtedly to the real Ashley party, became confused
with some other wherein the survivors probably did strike for Salt
Lake and were helped by the Mormons.* At any rate, the rapids which
had wrecked the earlier party and swallowed up the No-Name were
appropriately called Disaster Falls.

*Should any reader have knowledge of the men who were wrecked in
Lodore between the time of Ashley and Powell, the author would be glad
to hear of it.

The river descends throughout Lodore with great rapidity and every day
brought with it hard work and narrow escapes. Sometimes the danger
was of a novel and unexpected character, as on June 16th, when the
dry willows around camp caught fire. Powell had started for a climb
of investigation and looking down on the camp he perceived a sudden
tremendous activ