I 12 
The Colorado River 
miles. Under the circumstances the canyon seemed intermin¬ 
able and the cliffs insurmountable. The latter grow more pre¬ 
cipitous toward the lower end, and scaling would be a difficult 
feat for a man well fed and strong, though well-nigh hopeless 
for any weakened by lack of proper food. At last, however, 
an opening appeared. Here they discovered Provo encamped 
with an abundance of provisions, so their troubles were 
quickly over. The opening they had arrived at was probably 
Brown's Hole. There is only one other place that might be 
called an opening, and this is a small park-like break on the 
right side of the river, not far above Brown’s Hole, formerly 
called Little Brown’s Hole and also Ashley Park. The Ashley 
men would have had a hard climb to get out of this place, and 
it is not probable that Provo would have climbed into it, as no 
beaver existed there. It seems positive, then, that Ashley came 
to Provo in Brown’s Hole. Thus he did not “make his peril- 
lous way through Brown’s Hole,” as one author says, because 
he ended his journey with the beginning of that peaceful park. 
They lost two of their boats and several guns in Red Canyon, 
and Ashley left there a mark to identify the time of his pass¬ 
age. He wrote his name and the date, 1825, on a large rock 
above a sharp fall, which was (later, 1869,) named in his honour. 
I saw this inscription in 1871 and made a careful copy of it, 
which is given here. See also the illustra¬ 
tion of Ashley Falls on page 113. The lo¬ 
cation of it is just west of C in the 
words “Red Canon ” on the map, page 109, 
In the canyon of Lodore, at the foot of 
Disaster Falls, we found some wreckage in the sand, a bake- 
oven, tin plates, knives, etc,, which Powell first saw in 1869, 
but these could not have belonged to Ashley’s party, for 
plainly Ashley did not enter Lodore at all. It was evident¬ 
ly from some later expedition which probably started from 
Brown’s Park, in the days of Fort Davy Crockett. 
Provo had plenty of horses, and Ashley and his men 
joined him going out to Salt Lake, where Provo had come 
from. 
The year following Ashley’s attempt to trap Green River 
