proved later on. Mrs. Powell went to Salt Lake City before going east. We were all anxious to get started, but little did we know what was in store for us in the way of experience and danger. We had four boats, three of them were 22 feet long, 4 feet wide and 3 feet deep. Each end was decked over 4 feet at each end, air tight. These three were supposed to carry the provisions for ten men for eighteen months, that being the time Powell was going to take to make the trip. He was going to winter somewhere in the Canyon. His boat was sixteen feet long, made of pine; the others were oak. They were of the Whitehall pattern. The men were assigned to their boats and then the loads were placed in them. The Major's boat was used for a guide boat. It was manned by J. C. Sumner and William Dunn and the Major; next was Walter Powell and Bradley; the next was the Howland brothers and Frank Goodman; the next was the cook boat, manned by myself and Andy Hall. Each boat was loaded so as to have a nearly equal distribution, so that in case of an accident to one of them the others would still have an assortment of the provisions. After each boat had received its load we were ready to start. But where, none of us knew, only that we were going to go down through the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. We had been told that in places the water ran under the ground. There was a great many people on the bank of the river to see us start. We were all green at the business, Bradley was the only one that had any experience. But he acknowledged afterwards that this was a little rough. We had very good water for some twenty miles, but, of course, had to watch out for the small boat, as it was supposed to go where the other boats that were loaded could not go. I remember our first camp that evening for the night and as I was steering the boat with one oar behind and standing up I could see what was in front of us. I saw that they were all landing and I told Andy they were camping at this point. The river was straight and the water smooth and Powell signaled to me and we tried to land, and did finally get to shore some four hundred yards below and the other boats dropped down to where we were and the rest of the boys had the laugh on us. Andy and I told the Major that we were too heavily loaded, the water only lacking four inches from running over the sides of our boat, and as Andy said the next day, we were seven inches nearer the bottom of the river than the other two large boats, as they were nine inches above water, and that we better unload some of the bacon and take chances of replacing it with venison and mountain sheep later on. So we unloaded five hundred pounds of bacon in the river. We soon found out that was better. We now passed through Brown's Park, some forty miles from where we started. At the lower end of this park the river now runs into a bad canyon of red sandstone.