Point Hansborough 361 
this accident Stanton was obliged to assume the duties of 
photographer and took some seven hundred and fifty views 
without previous experience. 
By January 13th they had arrived at Point Retreat, where 
the canyon had before been abandoned, and here they found 
the supplies and blankets they had cached in a marble cave in 
perfect condition. The new boats were so well suited to the 
river work that they were able to run most of the rapids just 
as we had done, often going at the rate of fifteen miles an 
hour, and sometimes by actual measurement, twenty. Ten 
miles below Point Retreat, and twenty-five miles above the 
Little Colorado, when they were going into camp one evening 
they discovered the body of Peter Hansborough. The next 
morning, with a brief ceremony, they buried the remains at 
the foot of the cliff, carving his name on the face of the rock, 
and a point opposite was named after the unfortunate man. 
From Point Hansborough the canyon widens, “the marble 
benches retreat, new strata of limestone, quartzite, and sand¬ 
stone come up from the river,” writes Stanton, “and the debris 
forms a talus equal to a mountain slope. Here the bottoms 
widen into little farms covered with green grass and groves of 
mesquite, making a most charming summer picture, in strong 
contrast with the dismal narrow canyons above.” They then 
passed the Little Colorado and entered the Grand Canyon 
proper, meeting with a lone prospector in the wide portion just 
below the Little Colorado, the only person they had seen in 
any of the canyons traversed. 
Arriving at the First Granite Gorge (Archaean formation), 
they were at the beginning of the wildest stretch of river of all, 
perhaps the wildest to be found anywhere, the fall in the first 
ten miles averaging twenty-one feet to the mile, the greatest 
average except in Lodore and a portion of Cataract, and as 
this descent is not spread over the ten miles, but occurs in a 
series of falls with comparatively calm water between, it is not 
hard to picture the conditions. Stanton also pronounces these 
rapids of the First Granite Gorge the most powerful he saw, 
except two in the Second Granite Gorge. On January 29th 
they had cautiously advanced till they were before the grer 
