228 
The Colorado River 
correct enough, and they would have arrived at the settlements 
had not an unforeseen circumstance prevented. When the 
river party were ready to start the three deserters helped lift 
the two boats over a high rock and down past the first fall. 
Then they parted. Powell wrote a letter to his wife which 
Howland took, Sumner gave him his watch with directions 
that it be sent to his sister in the event of the river party being 
annihilated, and the duplicate records of the trip were sepa¬ 
rated, one set being given to Howland, who at the last begged 
them not to go on down the river, assuring them that a few 
miles more of such river as that now ahead of them would 
consume the last of the scant rations and then it would be too 
late to try to escape. In fact each party thought the other 
was taking the more desperate chance. By a mistake the 
duplicate records were wrongly divided, each party having 
portions of both sets. This afterwards made gaps in the river 
data below the Paria as far as Catastrophe Rapid. Powell en¬ 
tered the Maid of tJie Canyon and pulled away while the depart¬ 
ing men stood on an overhanging crag looking on. Both boats 
succeeded in going through without accident, and it was then 
apparent that the place was not so bad as it looked and that 
they had run many that were worse. Down below it they 
waited for a couple of hours hoping the men would change their 
minds, take the Dean^ and come on. But they were never seen 
again by white men. They climbed up the mighty cliffs to the 
summit of the Shewits Plateau, about fifty-five hundred feet, 
and that it is a hard climb I can testify, for I climbed down 
and back not far above this point. At length they were out 
of the canyon, and they must have rejoiced at leaving those 
gloomy depths behind. Northward they went, to a large water- 
pocket, a favourite camping-ground of the Shewits, a basin in 
the rocky channel of an intermittent stream, discharging into 
the Colorado. The only story of their fate was obtained from 
these Utes. Jacob Hamblin of Kanab learned it from some 
other Utes and afterwards got the story from them. They 
received the men at their camp and gave them food. During 
the night some of the band came in from the north and re¬ 
ported certain outrages by miners in that country. It was at 
