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Show DISASTER FALLS ASHLEY'S CEEEK. 27 As Ashley and his paity were wrecked here, and as we have lost one of our boats at the same place, we adopt the name Disaster Falls for the scene of so much peril and loss. Though some of his companions were drowned, Ashley and one other survived the wreck, climbed the canon wall, and found their way across the Wasatch Mountains to Salt Lake City, living chiefly on berries, as they wandered through an unknown and difficult country. When they arrived at Salt Lake, they were almost destitute of clothing, and nearly starved. The Mormon people gave them food and clothing, and employed them to work on the foundation of the Temple, until they had earned sufficient to enable them to leave the country. Of their subsequent history, I have no knowledge. It is possible they returned to the scene of the disaster, as a little creek entering the river below is known as Ashley's Creek, and it is reported that he built a cabin and trapped on this river for one or two winters; but this may have been before the disaster. June 13.-Still rocks, rapids, and portages. We camp to-night at the foot of the left wall on a little patch of flood-plain covered with a dense growth of box-elders, stopping early in order to spread the clothing and rations to dry. Everything is wet and spoiling. June 14.-Howland and I climb the wall, on the west side of the canon, to an altitude of 2,000 feet. Standing above, and looking to the west, we discover a large park, five or six miles wide and twenty or thirty long. The cliff we have climbed forms a wall between the canon and the park, for it is 800 feet, down the western side, to the valley. A creek comes winding down, 1,200 feet above the river, and, entering the intervening wall by a canon, it plunges down, more than a thousand feet, by a broken cascade, into the river below. - June 15.-To-day, while we make another portage, a peak, standing on the east wall, is climbed by two of the men, and found to be 2,700 feet above the river. On the east side of the canon, a vast amphitheater has been cut, with massive buttresses, and deep, dark alcoves, in which grow beautiful mosses and delicate ferns, while springs burst out from the further recesses, and wind, in silver threads/over floors of sand rock. Here we have three falls in close succession. At the first, the water is compressed into a very |
