they would meet with success. But there in
always remained the possibility of arriving on the brink of some high
fall where no footing on either side could be obtained, and where a
fierce current would prohibit a return. In such a case the exploration
would have ended then and there. The newspapers before this time had
printed a story of the expedition's collapse. The outer world supposed
that Powell and all his men but one had been destroyed, though A. H.
Thompson wrote to the Chicago Inter-Ocean, which first published it,
showing its absurdity. Mrs. Powell heard the story at her father's home
in Detroit and she pronounced it a fabrication, for she had received a
letter subsequent to the date given for the destruction of the party.
She also had faith in her husband's judgment, caution, and good sense,
so she refused to accept the tale at all, which was circulated by a man
who had started from Green River Station, and who, by "pitching" this
picturesque yarn, secured the sympathy and the purses of the passengers
on an east-bound Union Pacific train. He told how Powell and all the men
but himself had been suddenly swallowed up in an awful place, dark and
gloomy and full of fearful whirlpools, called Brown's Hole. From the
shore, where he alone had remained, he had despairingly witnessed the
party disappear in a mighty whirlpool never to rise again. But he made
a mistake, so far as Mrs. Powell was concerned, in naming the spot. She
knew very well that there was no danger whatever in Brown's Hole, and
that the river in this pretty park was the quietest on the whole course.
But for its inventor the yarn had fulfilled its purpose, and he found
himself east of the Mississippi, where he wanted to be, with a pocket
full of dollars. A week or two after the story appeared letters were
received from Powell via the Uinta Agency. These positively proved the
falsity of the tale.

On the fourth day in Cataract Canyon three portages were compulsory at
the very outset to pass safely over a stretch where the waters tumbled
seventy-five feet in three quarters of a mile, and at the end of this
three quarters of a mile they camped again, worn out by the severe toil.
Rapids now came with even greater frequency, between walls more than two
thousand feet high and often nearly vertical from the water. On the 27th
a flock of mountain sheep was discovered on the rocks not more than one
hundred feet above their heads. The game did not see the hunte