White’s Prayer 
i8i 
plunging; but he had scarcely straightened before the raft seemed 
to leap down a chasm and, amid the deafening roar of waters, White 
heard a shriek that thrilled him to the heart, and, looking around, 
saw, through the mist and spray, the form of his comrade tossed for 
an instant on the water, then sinking out of sight in a whirlpool/’ 
On the fifth day White lashed himself to the raft. He then 
describes a succession of rapids, passing which with great diffi¬ 
culty he reached a stream that he afterward learned was the 
Little Colorado. He said the canyon was like that of the San 
Juan, but they are totally different. The current of this stream 
swept across that of the Colorado, “causing in a black chasm 
on the opposite bank a large and dangerous whirlpool.” He 
could not avoid this and was swept by the cross current into 
this awful place, which, to relieve the reader’s anxiety, I hasten 
to add, does not exist. There is no whirlpool whatever at the 
mouth of the Little Colorado, nor any other danger. But 
White now felt that further exertion was useless, and amidst 
the “gurgling ” waters closed his eyes for some minutes, when, 
feeling a strange swinging sensation, he opened them and found 
that he was circling round the whirlpool, sometimes close to 
the terrible vortex, etc. He thought he fainted. He was 
nothing if not dramatic. When he recovered it was night. 
Then for the first time he thought of prayer. “I spoke as if 
from my very soul, and said: 'Oh, God, if there is a way out 
of this fearful place, show it to me, take me to it.’ ” His nar¬ 
rator says White’s voice here became husky and his features 
quivered. “I was still looking up with my hands clasped when 
I felt a different movement of the raft and turning to look at 
the whirlpool it was some distance behind (he could see it in 
the night!), and I was floating on the smoothest current I had 
yet seen in the canyon.” The current was now very slow and 
he found that the rapids were past. The terrible mythical 
whirlpool at the innocent mouth of the Little Colorado was 
the end of the turmoil, though he said the canyon went on. 
the course of the river being exceedingly crooked, and shut in 
by precipices of white sand rock! There is no white “sand- 
rock in the Grand Canyon. All through this terrific gorge 
