age or to let down, and Powell believed running it meant
certain destruction. They climbed up and along on the granite for a mile
or two, but there appeared no hope for success. In trying to secure an
advantageous position from which to view the fall Powell worked
himself into a position where he could neither advance nor retreat. His
situation was most precarious. The men were obliged to bring oars from
the boats four hundred feet below, to brace into the rocks in order
to get him safely back. The absence of his right arm made climbing
sometimes very difficult for him. This was on the side opposite their
first landing. Descending, they recrossed the river and spent the whole
afternoon trying to decide on a plan. At last Powell reached a decision.
It was to lower the boats over the first portion, a fall of eighteen or
twenty feet, then hug the right cliff to a point just above the second
drop, where they could enter a little chute, and having passed this
point they were to pull directly across the stream to avoid a dangerous
rock below. He told the men his intention of running the rapid the next
morning, and they all crossed the river once more to a landing where it
was possible to camp.

New and serious trouble now developed. The elder Howland remonstrated
with Powell against proceeding farther by the river and advised the
abandonment of the enterprise altogether. At any rate, he and his
brother and William Dunn would not go on in the boats. Powell sat up
that night plotting out his course and concluded from it that the mouth
of the Virgen could not be more than forty-five miles away in a straight
line. Calculating eighty or ninety miles by the river, and allowing for
the open country he knew existed below the end of the Grand Canyon, he
concluded that they must soon reach the mouth and be able to find the
Mormon settlements about twenty miles up the Virgen River. Then he
awoke Howland and explained the situation, and they talked it over. The
substance of this talk is not stated, but Howland went to sleep again
while Powell paced the sand till dawn, pondering on the best course to
take. The immediate danger of the rapid he thought could be overcome
with safety, but what was below? To climb out here, even were it
possible, was to reach the edge of a desert with the nearest Mormon town
not less than seventy-five miles distant, across an unknown country. So
heavily did this situation weigh upon him that he almost concluded