e's voice here became husky and his features
quivered. "I was still looking up with my hands clasped when I felt a
different movement of the raft and turning to look at the whirlpool
it was some distance behind (he could see it in the night!), and I was
floating on the smoothest current I had yet seen in the canyon." The
current was now very slow and he found that the rapids were past. The
terrible mythical whirlpool at the innocent mouth of the Little Colorado
was the end of the turmoil, though he said the canyon went on, the
course of the river being exceedingly crooked, and shut in by precipices
of white sand rock! There is no white "sand-rock" in the Grand Canyon.
All through this terrific gorge wherein the river falls some eighteen
hundred feet, White found a slow current and his troubles from rapids
were over! For 217 miles of the worst piece of river in the world, he
found no difficulty. The gloom and lack of food alone oppressed him,
and he thought of plunging from the raft, but lacked the courage. Had
he really entered the Grand Canyon his raft would have been speedily
reduced to toothpicks and he would not have had the choice of remaining
upon it. Finally, he reached a bank upon which some mesquite bushes
grew, and he devoured the green pods. Then sailing on in a sort of
stupor he was roused by voices and saw some Yampais, who gave him meat
and roasted mesquite beans. Proceeding, he heard voices again and a dash
of oars. It was Hardy and at last White was saved!

We have seen various actors passing before us in this drama, but I
doubt if any of them have been more picturesque than this champion
prevaricator. But he had related a splendid yarn. What it was intended
to obscure would probably be quite as interesting as what he told. Just
where he entered upon the river is of course impossible to decide, but
that he never came through the Grand Canyon is as certain as anything
can be. His story reveals an absolute ignorance of the river and its
walls throughout the whole course he pretended to have traversed.

NOTE.--Mr. R. B. Stanton in 1907 discovered that White was alive in New
Mexico. With a stenographer Mr. Stanton visited him and concludes that
White was not responsible for the tale, and that Parry's imagination
filled in the details. Mr. Stanton proves absolutely that White never
went through the Grand Canyon and that his route was from the foot of
the Grand Canyon to Callville.

CHAPTER VIII

The O