Another Yarn 
213 
lished it, showing its absurdity. Mrs. Powell heard the story 
at her father’s home in Detroit and she pronounced it a fabri¬ 
cation, for she had received a letter subsequent to the date 
given for the destruction of the party. She also had faith in 
her husband’s judgment, caution, and good sense, so she 
refused to accept the tale at all, which was circulated by a 
man who had started from Green River Station, and who, by 
“pitching” this picturesque yarn, secured the sympathy and 
the purses of the passengers on an east-bound Union Pacific 
train. He told how Powell and all the men but himself had 
been suddenly swallowed up in an awful place, dark and 
gloomy and full of fearful whirlpools, called Brown’s Hole. 
From the shore, where he alone had remained, he had 
despairingly witnessed the party disappear in a mighty whirl¬ 
pool never to rise again. But he made a mistake, so far as Mrs. 
Powell was concerned, in naming the spot. She knew very 
well that there was no danger whatever in Brown’s Hole, and 
that the river in this pretty park was the quietest on the whole 
course. But for its inventor the yarn had fulfilled its purpose, 
and he found himself east of the Mississippi, where he wanted 
to be, with a pocket full of dollars. A week or two after the 
story appeared letters were received from Powell via the Uinta 
Agency. These positively proved the falsity of the tale. 
On the fourth day in Cataract Canyon three portages were 
compulsory at the very outset to pass safely over a stretch 
where the waters tumbled seventy-five feet in three quarters 
of a mile, and at the end of this three quarters of a mile they 
camped again, worn out by the severe toil. Rapids now came 
with even greater frequency, between walls more than two 
thousand feet high and often nearly vertical from the water. 
On the 27th a flock of mountain sheep was discovered on the 
rocks not more than one hundred feet above their heads. The 
game did not see the hunters, who landed quickly in a con¬ 
venient cove, and two fat sheep were added to the rapidly 
diminishing larder. On the next day they were startled by 
the sudden closing in of the walls, till the canyon, now nearly 
three thousand feet deep, became very narrow, with the river 
filling the chasm from one blank cliff to the other. The water 
