357 
Leaving the River 
of proceeding farther with such boats as they had, forced the 
decision which should have been made at Lee’s Ferry. Stanton 
resolved to leave the river, but with the determination to return 
again to battle with the dragon at the earliest opportunity. 
The next thing was to get out of the canyon. They searched 
for some side canyon leading in from the north, by means of 
which they might return to the world, and just above Vesey’s 
Paradise they found it and spent their last night in Marble 
Canyon at that point. From the rapid where Brown was lost, 
to Vesey’s Paradise, my diary records that on our expedition 
of 1872 we ran twenty-six rapids, let down four times, and 
made two portages, all without any particular difficulty. I 
mention this merely to show the difference proper boats make 
in navigating this river, for the season was nearly the same; 
Brown was there in July and we in August, both the season of 
high water. The night passed by Stanton and his disheartened 
but courageous band at Vesey’s Paradise was long to be re¬ 
membered, for one of the violent thunder-storms frequent in 
the canyon, in summer, came up. The rain fell in floods, while 
about midnight the storm culminated in a climax of fury. 
Stanton says that in all his experience in the Western mount¬ 
ains he never heard anything like it. “Nowhere has the awful 
grandeur equalled that night in the lonesome depths of what 
was to us death’s canyon.’’ The next day was fair, and by 
two in the afternoon, July 19th, they were on the surface of 
the country, twenty-five hundred feet above the river, and 
that night reached a cattle ranch. 
By November 25th of the same year (1889) the indefatigable 
Stanton had organised a new party to continue the railway sur¬ 
vey. He still had confidence in the scheme, and he refused to 
give up. And this time the boats were planned with some re¬ 
gard to the waters upon which they were to be used. Mc¬ 
Donald was sent to superintend their building at the boatyard 
of H. H. Douglas & Co., Waukegan, Illinois. There were 
three, each twenty-two feet long, the same as our boats, four 
and one-half feet beam, and twenty-two inches deep, and each 
weighed 850 pounds. They were built of half-inch oak, on 
plans furnished by Stanton, with ribs one-and-one-half by 
