226 
The Colorado River 
They climbed up and along on the granite for a mile or two, 
but there appeared no hope for success. In trying to se¬ 
cure an advantageous position from which to view the fall 
Powell worked himself into a position where he could neither 
advance nor retreat. His situation was most precarious. The 
men were obliged to bring oars from the boats four hundred 
feet below, to brace into the rocks in order to get him safely 
back. The absence of his right arm made climbing sometimes 
very difficult for him. This was on the side opposite their first 
landing. Descending, they recrossed the river and spent the 
whole afternoon trying to decide on a plan. At last Powell 
reached a decision. It was to lower the boats over the first 
portion, a fall of eighteen or twenty feet, then hug the right 
cliff to a point just above the second drop, where they could 
enter a little chute, and having passed this point they were to 
pull directly across the stream to avoid a dangerous rock below. 
He told the men his intention of running the rapid the next 
morning, and they all crossed the river once more to a landing 
where it was possible to camp. 
New and serious trouble now developed. The elder How¬ 
land remonstrated with Powell against proceeding farther by 
the river and advised the abandonment of the enterprise alto¬ 
gether. At any rate, he and his brother and William Dunn 
would not go on in the boats. Powell sat up that night plot¬ 
ting out his course and concluded from it that the mouth of 
the Virgen could not be more than forty-five miles away in a 
straight line. Calculating eighty or ninety miles by the river, 
and allowing for the open country he knew existed below the 
end of the Grand Canyon, he concluded that they must soon 
reach the mouth and be able to find the Mormon settlements 
about twenty miles up the Virgen River. Then he awoke 
Howland and explained the situation, and they talked it over. 
The substance of this talk is not stated, but Howland went to 
sleep again while Powell paced the sand till dawn, pondering 
on the best course to take. The immediate danger of the 
rapid he thought could be overcome with safety, but what was 
below? To climb out here, even were it possible, was to reach 
the edge of a desert with the nearest Mormon town not less 
