Frail Boats 
347 
as of slight consequence. Great discomfort and suffering and 
death often followed a failure to provide proper supplies, or, 
when provided, to take sufficient care to preserve them. 
On the 25th of May, 1889, Brown’s party was ready and 
started from the point where the Rio Grande Western crosses 
Green River. There were sixteen men and six boats. Five 
of the boats were new; the sixth was the one Kendrick and 
Rigney had used on the Grand River trip. The chief engineer 
of the proposed railway was Robert Brewster Stanton, and 
that he was not in the very beginning given the entire manage¬ 
ment was most unfortunate, for Brown himself seems not to 
have had a realisation of the enormous difficulties of the task 
before him. But the arrangements were completed before 
Stanton was engaged. All the men were surprised, disap¬ 
pointed, dismayed, at the character of the boats Brown had 
provided for this dangerous enterprise, and Stanton said his 
heart sank at the first sight of them. They were entirely in¬ 
adequate, built of cedar instead of oak, only fifteen feet long 
and three feet wide, and weighed but one hundred and fifty 
pounds each. They would have been beautiful for an ordinary 
river, but for the raging, plunging, tumultuous Colorado their 
name was suicide. Then not a life-preserver had been brought. 
This neglect was another shock to the members of the party 
and their friends. Stanton was urged to take one for himself, 
but he declined to provide this advantage over the other men. 
Since then he has been disposed to blame Powell for not telling 
Brown that life-preservers are a necessity on the Colorado. 
He also says that Powell even declared to Brown that they 
were not imperative, and he consequently censures him for the 
subsequent disasters. There was certainly a misunderstanding 
in this, for Powell, knowing the situation from such abund¬ 
ant experience, never could have said life-preservers were not 
necessary, though on his first trip he did not have any. In 
this connection Thompson writes me : “The Major sent for me 
at once when Mr. Brown called at the office. I think we talked 
—we three, I mean—for half an hour, then the Major said, ‘ Pro¬ 
fessor Thompson knows just as much about the river as I do, 
and more about what is necessary for such a trip ; you talk with 
