* The Rio Grande Western.  The route was west of the river.

By January 13th they had arrived at Point Retreat, where the canyon had before been abandoned, and here they found the supplies and blankets they had cached in a marble cave in perfect condition.  The new boats were so well suited to the river work that they were able to run most of the rapids just as we had done, often going at the rate of fifteen miles an hour, and sometimes by actual measurement, twenty.  Ten miles below Point Retreat, and twenty-five miles above the Little Colorado, when they were going into camp one evening they discovered the body of Peter Hansborough.  The next morning, with a brief ceremony, they buried the remains at the foot of the cliff, carving his name on the face of the rock, and a point opposite was named after the unfortunate man.  From Point Hansborough the canyon widens, “the marble benches retreat, new strata of limestone, quartzite, and sandstone come up from the river,” writes Stanton, “and the debris forms a talus equal to a mountain slope.  Here the bottoms widen into little farms covered with green grass and groves of mesquite, making a most charming summer picture, in strong contrast with the dismal narrow canyons above.”  They then passed the Little Colorado and entered the Grand Canyon proper, meeting with a lone prospector in the wide portion just below the Little Colorado, the only person they had seen in any of the canyons traversed.

Arriving at the First Granite Gorge (Archaean formation), they were at the beginning of the wildest stretch of river of all, perhaps the wildest to be found anywhere, the fall in the first ten miles averaging twenty-one feet to the mile, the greatest average except in Lodore and a portion of Cataract, and as this descent is not spread over the ten miles, but occurs in a series of falls with comparatively calm water between, it is not hard to picture the conditions.  Stanton also pronounces these rapids of the First Granite Gorge the most powerful he saw, except two in the Second Granite Gorge.  On January 29th they had cautiously advanced till they were before the great descent some of our party had called the Sockdologer, the heaviest fall on the river, about eighty feet in a third of a mile.  They proceeded all along in much the same careful fashion as we had done, and as everyone who hopes to make this passage alive must proceed.  The water being low, they were able to let their boats by line over the upper end of the Sockdologer with safety, but, in attempting to continue, the Marie was caught by a cross-current and thrown against the rocks, turned half over, filled with water, and jammed tightly between two boulders lying just beneath the surface.  In winter, the air in the canyon is not very cold, but the river coming so swiftly from the far north is, and the men with lines about their waists who tried to go through the rushing waist-deep water found it icy.  Taking turns, they succeeded with a grappling-hook