Grand Teton National Park (Wyo.); Jackson Hole (Wyo.)
No food left but a handful of flour. Shot White’s horse, and feasted.
It was now evident that we were not going to run the canyon with the
boat, but must tug away slowly. We were about 42 miles from the first
settlement, if our information was correct, but the canyon, if very
crooked as it had been so far, might double that distance. I desired
to get the boat through if we had to risk everything in order to do
so. This canyon was the terrible obstacle and we were more than half
way through it. Apparently the worst had been gone through with. All
the men agreed to this with enthusiasm. We gathered together all the
money in the possession of the party, and arranged for Sergeant
Server, the most active and youngest of the party, and Warren, who
could be of no assistance to those remaining, as his stomach had begun
to give way, to go on next day with the two horses and one mule
remaining and bring us back rations.
Sergeant Server and Warren loaded up as planned the following day,
leaving the Lieutenant and the other 4 men to continue with the boat.
The river was becoming better, the ice foot more uniform and the
channel free from frozen pools when all of a sudden the boat touched
the icy margin, turned under it, and the next instant was dancing end
over end in the swift, bold current. All of the horse meat, all the
property, arms, instruments and note books were in the roaring stream.
A few hundred yards below there was a narrow place where the ice foot
almost touched the middle of the river. We ran thither and caught
whatever floated. The clothing bags, valise, bedding, bundles, and the
lodge were saved. All else, excepting one hind quarter of the old
horse, went to the bottom and was seen no more. All the rubber boots
were gone excepting mine. The warm clothing all floated and was saved.
We dragged in the boat by the tow line and pulled her out of the water
and far up on a ledge of rock. 6 miles.
After this mishap, the Sergeant and Warren, who had been traveling along
the river bank, keeping in contact with the boat party, were sent at
once on their way, while Doane and his men dried out and rested. The
boatmen fought their way down the river for the next two days, but on
December 14 the boat was hauled high on the bank in an apparently secure
place. The last of the horse meat had been eaten for breakfast, no food
was left.
The following morning the bedding was stored away in rolls with the
valise, high up among the rocks, and Doane’s party started,
... unarmed, without food, and in an unknown wilderness to find
settlements (previously described by the trapper, Pierce) seven miles
up on a stream which we had no positive assurance of being able to
recognize when we came to its mouth.
That day the men waded the Salt River (near the present site of Alpine)
having spent 7 days in the gloomy depths of the “Mad River Canyon.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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