Wheeler’s Party 297 
These were Loring, Hamel, and Salmon. Loring was a bril¬ 
liant young literary man from Boston, whose career was thus 
sadly ended. 
The boats appear not to have been regularly named, though 
two of them, at least, received titles before long, one, the boat 
Gilbert was in, being called the Trilobite, and the other, the 
photographic boat, was termed the Picture. Leaving Mohave 
on September i6th (1871) they proceeded with little difficulty 
by towing and row¬ 
ing, as far as Ives 
had taken the Ex¬ 
plorer^ to the foot 
of Black Canyon. 
From here the 
work was harder, 
but by the i8th 
they had arrived in 
the heart of this 
canyon. The rap¬ 
ids were now more 
severe, but as Ives 
had gone up easily, 
and also Johnson 
with his steam¬ 
boat, and Rodgers 
with his, there was 
nothing to prevent 
the ascent of this 
party. On the tenth day, therefore, they passed Fortification 
Rock and reached Las Vegas Wash, the termination of the 
Ives exploration. From here to the mouth of the Virgen was 
the stretch that had, technically, never been explored, though 
it had been traversed, at least, several times. There is one 
small canyon in the distance, called Boulder. Passing the 
mouth of the Virgen, Wheeler entered the canyon through the 
Virgen Mountains, and this he named Virgin Canyon because, 
as he says, it was his ''first canyon on entirely new ground.” 
I am at a loss to understand his meaning. If he intended to 
The Beginning of a Natural Arch. 
Photograph by C. R. Savage. 
