Bishop’s 44-calibre Remington revolver for the purpose.  When I pulled the trigger I was positively startled by the violence of the report, a deafening shock like a thousand thunder-claps in one; then dead silence.  Next, from far away there was a rattle as of musketry, and peal after peal of the echoing shot came back to us.  The interval of silence was timed on another trial and was found to be exactly twenty seconds.* The result was always the same, and from this unusual echo we named the place Echo Peaks.

* Should be twenty-four seconds.

I had made Jones a pair of crutches, by means of which he was able to hobble painfully around, and by the time the pack-train was ready to start for the settlement, about one hundred miles away, he could bear being lifted upon a horse.  Steward, also, was able to ride, and with a number of us walking we left the Paria behind.

November’s sharp days were upon us.  We had only the remains of our summer clothing and few blankets, so that when the thermometer registered 11 degrees F. above zero we did not dispute it.

CHAPTER XII

Into the Jaws of the Dragon—­A Useless Experiment—­Wheeler Reaches
Diamond Creek Going Up-stream—­The Hurricane Ledge—­Something about
Names—­A Trip from Kanab through Unknown Country to the Mouth of the
Dirty Devil.

While our party, in September, was battling with the cataracts, another, as we afterwards learned, was starting from Camp Mohave on a perilous, impracticable, and needless expedition up the Colorado.  How far this party originally expected to be able to proceed against the tremendous obstacles I have never understood, but the after-statement mentions Diamond Creek as the objective point.  That such a wild, useless, and costly struggle should have been allowed by the War Department, which authorised it, seems singular, more particularly as little new was or could be, accomplished by it.  The War Department must have known that Powell, two years before, had descended the river from Wyoming to the mouth of the Virgen, and that he was now more than half-way down the river on his second, more detailed exploration, authorised and paid for by the Government.  Lieutenant Ives had also years before completely explored as high as the Vegas Wash, and there were therefore only the few miles, about twenty-five, between that Wash and the mouth of the Virgen, which might technically be considered unexplored, though only technically, for several parties had passed over it.  Then why was this forlorn hope inaugurated?  What credit could any one expect to obtain by bucking for miles up the deep, dangerous gorge filled with difficult rapids, which Powell had found hazardous and well-nigh impossible, coming down with the current?  The leader of this superfluous endeavour was Lieutenant Wheeler, of the Topographical Engineers, who had been roaming the Western country for several years with