An Unknown River 
189 
between walls vertical at the water, into a deep blue haze, it 
seemed to me that anything might be found there, and looking 
up from my seat in the bow of our boat into the gallant ex¬ 
plorer’s face, I said: “Major, what would you have done on 
the first trip if just beyond that bend you had come upon a 
fall like Niagara? “ He regarded me a moment with his pene¬ 
trating gaze, and then answered: “I don’t know.’’ Perhaps 
he thought that what we now would find there was enough 
for the moment. 
Captain Mansfield, reporting to the Secretary of War, 
wrote in his letter of December 10, 1867: “Above Callville for 
several hundred miles the river is entirely unknown.’’ He 
recommended Callville as the starting-place for exploration, 
and a small steamer for the work, with skiffs and canvass boats 
for continuing beyond the steam-navigation limit; but Captain 
Rodgers, who had gone with the steamboat Esmeralda up 
through Black Canyon, thought the great canyon should be 
entered above Callville after the fall of water in the spring, and 
his was more nearly a correct idea. The War Department 
continued, however, to butt against the wrong end, even after 
the success of the other way had been demonstrated. Some 
Mormons, who did not know, reported the two hundred miles 
above Callville to be better than the one hundred below. The 
two hundred miles above contain some of the most dangerous 
portions of the river. Colonel Williamson stated in March, 
1868, that he could obtain no information of importance with 
regard to the “Big” canyon except that contained in Dr. 
Parry’s account of White’s alleged journey, which journey, as 
I have pointed out, was a myth. 
“If that report be reliable,” he says, “it is evident that in the high 
or middle stage of the river a strongly built boat can come down the 
canon with safety. Before reading that report I had an idea that it 
would be a very dangerous experiment to attempt to go down this 
canon in a boat of any kind, because I feared there were falls, in 
going down, in which a boat might be upset or even dashed to 
pieces. As it is, now I believe there are no falls, and I am inclined 
to think the best way is to start above and descend.” 
