200 
The Colorado River 
to me in all those dark hours/’ writes Powell. To meet with 
such a reverse at so early a stage was very discouraging, but 
Powell had counted on disaster, and, as he was never given to 
repining, as soon as breakfast was eaten the next morning he 
cast about for a way to rescue the barometers which were in a 
part of the wreck that had lodged among some rocks a half 
mile below. Sumner and Dunn volunteered to try to reach the 
place with the small boat, and they succeeded. When they 
returned, a loud cheer went up from those on shore, and Powell 
was much impressed with this exhibition of deep interest in the 
safety of the scientific instruments, but he soon discovered that 
the cheer was in celebration of the rescue of a three-gallon keg 
of whiskey that had been smuggled along without his know¬ 
ledge and happened to be on the ill-fated No-Name. 
It required a good deal of work to complete the portage 
around the double fall so that night again compelled them to 
camp near its spray, this time on a sand bank at the foot of the 
lower descent. Here, half buried in the gravel of the beach, 
some objects were discovered which revealed the fact that 
some other party had suffered a similar disastrous experience. 
These were an iron bake-oven, several tin plates, fragments of 
a boat, and other indications of a wreck at this place long years 
before. In his report, Powell ascribes this wreck to Ashley, 
but this is a mistake, for Ashley seems never to have entered 
this canyon, ending his voyage, as I have previously stated, 
when he reached Brown’s Park. This wreckage then was from 
some other and later party. Powell also states that Ashley 
and one other survivor succeeded in reaching Salt Lake, where 
they were fed and clothed by the Mormons and employed on 
the Temple foundation until they had earned enough to enable 
them to leave the country. These men could not have been 
Ashley and a companion, for several reasons: one cited above; 
another that the Mormons had not yet settled at Salt Lake in 
Ashley’s day; and a third, that Ashley was a wealthy and dis¬ 
tinguished man, and would not have required pecuniary help. 
The disaster recorded by the bake-oven, etc., must then have 
occurred after 1847, the year the Mormons went into the Salt 
Lake Valley. Possibly it may have been the party mentioned 
