I call for help. The men come, and pass me a line, but
I cannot let go of the rock long enough to take hold of it. Then they
bring two or three of the largest oars. All this takes time which seems
very precious to me; but at last they arrive. The blade of one of the
oars is pushed into a little crevice in the rock beyond me, in such a
manner that they can hold me pressed against the wall. Then another is
fixed in such a way that I can step on it, and thus I am extricated.

Still another hour is spent in examining the river from this side, but
no good view of it is obtained, so now we return to the side that was
first examined, and the afternoon is spent in clambering among the crags
and pinnacles, and carefully scanning the river again. We find that the
lateral streams have washed boulders into the river, so as to form a dam
over which the water makes a broken fall of eighteen or twenty feet;
then there is a rapid, beset with rocks, for two or three hundred yards,
while, on the other side, points of the wall project into the river.
Then there is a second fall below; how great, we cannot tell. Then there
is a rapid, filled with huge rocks, for one or two hundred yards. At the
bottom of it, from the right wall, a great rock projects quite half-way
across the river. It has a sloping surface extending upstream, and the
water, coming down with all the momentum gained in the falls and rapids
above, rolls up this inclined plane many feet and tumbles over to the
left. I decide that it is possible to let down over the first fall, then
run near the right cliff to a point just above the second, where we can
pull out into a little chute, and, having run over that in safety, we
must pull with all our power across the stream, to avoid the great rock
below. On my return to the boat, I announce to the men that we are to
run it in the morning. Then we cross the river, and go down into camp
for the night on some rocks, in the mouth of the little side canon.

After supper Captain Howland asks to have a talk with me. We walk up the
little creek a short distance, and I soon find that his object is to
remonstrate against my determination to proceed. He thinks that we had
better abandon the river here. Talking with him, I learn that his
brother, William Dunn, and himself have determined to go no farther in
the boats. So we return to camp. Nothing is said to the other men.

For the last two days our course has not been plotted. I sit down and