a distance of forty-three miles from the start the rapids grew very bad, and at one place they were forced to make a portage for twelve miles.  At the end of one hundred miles they came to the little Mormon settlement of Moab.  From here to the Junction of the Grand and Green was a distance of sixty miles, and the water was the same as it is just above the Junction, in the canyons of the Green, Stillwater, and Labyrinth, that is, comparatively smooth and offering no obstacles except a rather swift current.  Nowhere had the cliffs risen above one thousand feet, and the river had an average fall of five feet to the mile.  This was the first party on record to navigate, for any considerable distance, the canyons of Grand River.  From the Junction they proceeded up the Green, towing the boat, desiring to reach the Rio Grande Western Railway crossing, one hundred and twenty miles away.  By this time their rations were much diminished and they allowed themselves each day only one-half the ordinary amount, at the same time going on up the river as fast as possible, yet at the end of about eight days, when still thirty miles from their destination, they were reduced to their last meal.  Fortunately they then arrived at the cabin of some cattlemen, Wheeler Brothers, who, discovering their plight, put their own ample larder, with true Western hospitality, at the surveyors’ disposal.  Thus opportunely fortified and refreshed, the men reached the railway crossing the following night.

In reviewing all the early travels through this inhospitable region, one is struck by the frequent neglect of the question of food-supplies.  In such a barren land, this is the item of first importance, and yet many of the leaders treated it apparently as of slight consequence.  Great discomfort and suffering and death often followed a failure to provide proper supplies, or, when provided, to take sufficient care to preserve them.

On the 25th of May, 1889, Brown’s party was ready and started from the point where the Rio Grande Western crosses Green River.  There were sixteen men and six boats.  Five of the boats were new; the sixth was the one Kendrick and Rigney had used on the Grand River trip.  The chief engineer of the proposed railway was Robert Brewster Stanton, and that he was not in the very beginning given the entire management was most unfortunate, for Brown himself seems not to have had a realisation of the enormous difficulties of the task before him.  But the arrangements were completed before Stanton was engaged.  All the men were surprised, disappointed, dismayed, at the character of the boats Brown had provided for this dangerous enterprise, and Stanton said his heart sank at the first sight of them.  They were entirely inadequate, built of cedar instead of oak, only fifteen feet long and three feet wide, and weighed but one hundred and fifty pounds each.  They would have been beautiful for an ordinary river, but for the raging, plunging, tumultuous Colorado